Call if You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose Page 21

  I’d like to make claims for these twenty as being the best stories published in the United States and Canada in 1985. But since I know there will be some people who won’t agree with this and since I know, too, that another editor would have chosen differently, with possibly two or three notable exceptions, I’d better say instead that I believe these twenty are among the best stories published in 1985. And I’ll go on to say the obvious: under someone else’s editorship, this would be a different book with an entirely different feel and composition to it. But this is only as it should be. For no editor puts together a collection such as this without bringing to it his or her own biases and notions of what makes a good story a good story. What works in a short story? What convinces us? Why am I moved, or perturbed, by this story? Why do some stories seem good the first time around but don’t hold up on rereading? (I read every story I’ve included here at least four times; if I found myself still interested, still excited by the story after I’d read it a fourth time, I figured it might be a story I wanted to see in the book.)

  There were other biases at work. I lean toward realistic, “lifelike” characters—that is to say, people—in realistically detailed situations. I’m drawn toward the traditional (some would call it old-fashioned) methods of storytelling: one layer of reality unfolding and giving way to another, perhaps richer layer; the gradual accretion of meaningful detail; dialogue that not only reveals something about character but advances the story. I’m not very interested, finally, in haphazard revelations, attenuated characters, stories where method or technique is all—stories, in short, where nothing much happens, or where what does happen merely confirms one’s sour view of a world gone out of control. Too, I distrust the inflated language that some people pile on when they write fiction. I believe in the efficacy of the concrete word, be it noun or verb, as opposed to the abstract or arbitrary or slippery word—or phrase, or sentence. I tried to steer away from stories that, in my terms, didn’t seem to be written well, stories where the words seemed to slide into one another and blur the meaning. If that happens, if the reader loses his way and his interest, for whatever reason, the story suffers and usually dies.

  Abjure carelessness in writing, just as you would in life.

  The present volume is not to be seen as a holding action against slipshod writing or poorly conceived and executed stories. But it does, by virtue of its contents, stand squarely against that brand of work. I believe it is safe to say that the day of the campy, or crazy, or trivial, stupidly written account of inconsequential acts that don’t count for much in the world has come and gone. And we should all be grateful that it has passed on. I deliberately tried to pick stories that rendered, in a more or less straightforward manner, what it’s like out there. I wanted the stories I selected to throw some light on what it is that makes us and keeps us, often against great odds, recognizably human.

  Short stories, like houses—or cars, for that matter—should be built to last. They should also be pleasing, if not beautiful, to look at, and everything inside them should work. A reader searching for “experimental” or “innovative” stories won’t find them here. (Along with Flannery O’Connor, I admit to being put off by something that “looks funny” on the page.) Donald Barthelme’s “Basil from Her Garden” is the closest thing anyone will find to the experimental or avant-garde. But Barthelme is the exception in this, as he is in all things: his oftentimes “funny-looking” stories are properly inimitable, and this is as good a touchstone as any for picking stories you want to preserve. His stories are also, in some strange way, quite often moving, which is another touchstone.

  Since I mentioned Barthelme, I’m brought to remark on a final item in the selection process. On the one hand, you have stories of the first order by some of the best, and best-known, living American and Canadian writers—which is to say, stories by some of the best writers in the English language. On the other hand, you have a few equally wonderful stories from unknown, or virtually unknown, writers. And the editor of this collection is supposed to pick twenty and no more for his book. A plethora of riches. But what if there are two “equally wonderful” stories, and finally you’re making the last selection, and there’s room in the book for, say, only one of those? Which story is to be included? Should the interests of the great or well-known authors be looked after over and above the interests of the lesser known? Should extraliterary considerations ever apply? Happily, I can say it never came to that, quite. In the one or two instances when it seemed headed in that direction, I picked a story of quality by an unknown writer. But finally—in every case, really—the stories I selected were, in my estimation, the best stories available, “name” and prior achievements notwithstanding.

  Yet looking back, I see it’s turned out that many, if not the majority, of my selections fell on younger, lesser-known writers. Jessica Neely, say. Who is she, and how does she come to write a story as beautiful as “Skin Angels”? Look at this irresistible first sentence: “In the beginning of the summer my mother memorized the role of Lady Macbeth four mornings a week and worked the late shift in Geriatrics.” Or Ethan Canin. Why have I read only one short story by him before now? What is his fine story “Star Food” doing in a “city magazine” like Chicago—a magazine, I’m told, that doesn’t plan to publish fiction any longer. And this writer David Michael Kaplan. His name rings a bell, faintly. I think so, anyway. (Maybe I’m thinking of another writer, a poet or a fiction writer who uses three names and who has a name that sounds like David Michael Kaplan.) In any event, “Doe Season” is an amazing piece of work. What a joy, what a great pleasure it was to come across this story and to be able to reprint it in the company of such other fine stories. Or take, for instance, another unknown writer, Mona Simpson, and her superb “Lawns” with her irresistible first sentence, “I steal.” Take another writer whose work I was not familiar with, Kent Nelson. His wonderful story “Invisible Life” has to do, in part, with the new beginnings some people are always trying to make.

  A further admission. I confess to not having read David Lipsky before this. Surely he’s published other work. Have I been asleep and missed some stories of his, or maybe even a novel or two? I don’t know. I do know I intend to pay attention from now on if I see his name over a short story. “Three Thousand Dollars” is, well, there’s nothing in the book quite like it. Which is partly, but only partly, the point I’m trying to make.

  James Lee Burke. Here’s another writer I didn’t know the first thing about. But he’s written a story called “The Convict” that I’m proud to have in this collection. There’s a remarkable evocation of a particular time and place at work in the story (as there is with each story I picked, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons I was attracted to begin with; a sense of place, location, setting being as important to me as it is). But there is the strong personal drama of the young narrator and his father, Will Broussard, who tells the boy, “You have to make choices in this world.”

  Choices. Conflict. Drama. Consequences. Narrative.

  Christopher McIlroy. Where in the world did he come from? How does he know so much about alcohol, ranch life, pastry, and the dreary existence of the reservation Indians—not to mention the secrets of the human heart?

  Grace Paley, of course, is Grace Paley—fundamental reading to short story readers. She has been doing inimitable work for nearly thirty years. I’m pleased to be able to include her splendid story “Telling.” And Alice Munro, the distinguished Canadian short story writer. For some years she’s been quietly writing some of the best short fiction in the world. “Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux” is a good example.

  Are we our brothers’ keepers? Before answering, read Munro’s story and “The Rich Brother,” an unforgettable story by Tobias Wolff. “Where is he? Where is your brother?” is the question Donald, the rich brother, has to answer at the conclusion.

  And there’s Ann Beattie’s scrupulously written and singular story “Janus,” which is given entirely in narrative.
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  Some of the writers whose work I was to one degree or another familiar with before I selected their stories include Joy Williams, Richard Ford, Thomas McGuane, Frank Conroy, Charles Baxter, Amy Hempel, Tess Gallagher—the last an established poet. (Fact: short stories are closer in spirit to poems than they are to novels.)

  What do these writers have in common so far as the stories in this anthology are concerned?

  For one thing they are, each of them, concerned with writing accurately, that is to say, thoughtfully and carefully, about recognizable men and women and children going about the sometimes ordinary business of living, which is, as we all know, not always an easy matter. And they are writing, in most cases, not just about living and getting by, but about going on, sometimes against the odds, sometimes even prevailing against the odds. They are writing, in short, about things that count. What counts? Love, death, dreams, ambition, growing up, coming to terms with your own and other people’s limitations. Dramas every one, and dramas played out against a larger canvas than might be apparent on first glance.

  Talk about bias! I see now that each of the stories in the book has to do, in one way or another, with family, with other people, with community. “Real people” in the guise of fictional characters inhabit the stories, make decisions for good or evil (mostly good), and reach a turning point, which in some cases is a point of no return. In any case, things will never be the same for them again. The reader will find grown-up men and women in the stories—husbands, wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, lovers of every stripe including one poignant father-daughter relationship (Mona Simpson’s “Lawns”). The characters in the stories are people you’re likely to be familiar with. If they’re not kin, or your immediate neighbors, they live on a nearby street, or else in a neighboring town, or maybe even the next state over. (I’m talking about a real state now, a place on the map, not just a state of mind.) The Pima Indian reservation in Arizona, for instance. Or else northern California, the Eureka and Mendocino counties area in particular; the high tableland country around Victory, Montana; a small town in northern Vermont. Or else they live in New York, or Berkeley, or Houston, or just outside New Orleans—not such exotic places finally, when all is said and done. The people in the stories are not terribly exotic, either. We’ve seen them in the cities, towns, and countrysides I’ve just mentioned, or else on TV, talking to the news commentator, bearing witness, telling how it feels to have survived, to have come through, after the house was carried away in the flood, or the fourth-generation farm has been foreclosed on by the FHA. They are people who’ve been struck and altered by circumstance and who are about to turn this way or that, depending.

  I’m saying the people in the stories are very much like us, in our better—and worse—moments. In “Gossip,” Frank Conroy has his narrator say and, more importantly, understand the following: “Everyone was connected in a web … pain was part of the web, and yet despite it, people loved one another. That’s what you found out when you got older.” The people in the stories make decisions, as we all do, that affect the way they will live their lives ever after. In “Communist,” Richard Ford’s young narrator, Les, says, “I felt the way you feel when you are on a trestle all alone and the train is coming, and you know you have to decide.” He does decide, and nothing is the same for him afterward.

  The train is coming, and we have to decide. Is this true, or is this true? “There’re limits to everything, right?” says Glen, the ex-CIA man, the mother’s boyfriend in the story, the goose hunter, the “communist.”

  Right.

  In his story, “All My Relations”—a title, incidentally, that could serve as an overall title for this collection—Christopher McIlroy has his rancher, Jack Oldenburg, say these words to Milton, concerning Milton’s self-destructive drinking: “Drawing the line helps you. It’s not easy living right.… The right way is always plain, though we do our best to obscure it.”

  In “Today Will Be a Quiet Day,” the little gem of a story by Amy Hempel, the dad who is trying to raise his two precocious kids and do the right “dad” things on a rainy Sunday afternoon has this to say about a father’s concerns: “You think you’re safe … but it’s thinking you’re invisible because you closed your eyes.” Hempel also has one of the best and simplest descriptions of happiness I’ve ever read: “He doubted he would ever feel—not better, but more than he did now.”

  From “Sportsmen,” Thomas McGuane’s fine story that takes place in the 1950s in a little town on the shore of Lake Erie, we share a strange meal with two teenagers, one of whom has suffered a broken neck in a diving accident:

  I had to feed Jimmy off the point of my Barlow knife, but we ate two big ducks for breakfast and lunch at once.…

  “Fork me some of that there duck meat,” said Jimmy Meade in his Ohio voice.…

  [Later] I wrap Jimmy’s blanket up under his chin.

  And in David Lipsky’s “Three Thousand Dollars” there is the following little exchange:

  “I just don’t want to be a burden.”

  “You are,” she says. “But it’s OK. I mean, I’m your mother, and you’re supposed to be my burden.”

  You see what I’m saying? I’m not sure what I’m saying, but I think I know what I’m trying to get at. Somehow, and I feel strongly about this, these twenty stories are connected, they belong together—at least to my way of thinking—and when you read them I hope you’ll see what I mean.

  Putting together a collection such as this lets the reader in on what it is, in the way of short stories at least, that the editor likes and holds dear to his heart. Which is fine. One of the things I feel strongly about is that while short stories often tell us things we don’t know anything about—and this is good, of course—they should also, and maybe more importantly, tell us what everybody knows but what nobody is talking about. At least not publicly. Except for the short story writers.

  Of the writers included here, Grace Paley is the one who has been at it the longest. Her first book of stories appeared in 1:959. Donald Barthelme published his first book five years later, in 1964. Alice Munro, Frank Conroy, Ann Beattie, Thomas McGuane, Joy Williams—they’ve also been working at this trade for a while. Two writers who have come to prominence recently are Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff. I don’t in the least worry about the other, newer writers. Charles Baxter. Amy Hempel. David Lipsky. Jessica Neely. David Michael Kaplan. Tess Gallagher. James Lee Burke. Mona Simpson. Christopher McIlroy. Kent Nelson. Ethan Canin. They’re fine writers, each of them, and I have the feeling they’re stickers as well. I think they’ve found the road and will keep to it.

  Of course, if this collection was anything like the other Best American collections or like Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, odds are that many of the writers I’ve included would never be seen or heard from again. (If you don’t believe this, go look at the table of contents of any of the major anthologies for the past several years. Open the 1976 Best American collection or the 1966 edition and see how many names you recognize.) The more established writers I’ve included will, I’m sure, go on producing work of distinction. But, as I’ve said, I don’t plan to worry about the newer writers in this book finding their way. I have the feeling they’ve pretty much done that already.

  Writers write, and they write, and they go on writing, in some cases long after wisdom and even common sense have told them to quit. There are always plenty of reasons—good, compelling reasons, too—for quitting, or for not writing very much or very seriously. (Writing is trouble, make no mistake, for everyone involved, and who needs trouble?) But once in a great while lightning strikes, and occasionally it strikes early in the writer’s life. Sometimes it comes later, after years of work. And sometimes, most often, of course, it never happens at all. Strangely, it seems, it may hit people whose work you can’t abide, an event that, when it occurs, causes you to feel there’s no justice whatsoever in the world. (There isn’t, more often than not.) It may hit the man or woman who is or was
your friend, the one who drank too much, or not at all, who went off with someone’s wife, or husband, or sister, after a party you attended together. The young writer who sat in the back of the class and never had anything to say about anything. The dunce, you thought. The writer who couldn’t, not in one’s wildest imaginings, make anyone’s list of top ten possibilities. It happens sometimes. The dark horse. It happens, lightning, or it doesn’t happen. (Naturally, it’s more fun when it does happen.) But it will never, never happen to those who don’t work hard at it and who don’t consider the act of writing as very nearly the most important thing in their lives, right up there next to breath, and food, and shelter, and love, and God.

  I hope people will read these stories for pleasure and amusement, for solace, courage—for whatever reasons people turn to literature—and will find in them something that will not just show us how we live now (though a writer could do worse than set his sights on this goal), but something else as well: a sense of union maybe, an aesthetic feeling of correctness; nothing less, really, than beauty given form and made visible in the incomparable way only short stories can do. I hope readers will find themselves interested and maybe even moved from time to time by what they find herein. Because if short story writing, along with the reading of short stories, doesn’t have to do with any of these matters, then what is it we are all doing, what is it we are about, pray tell? And why are we gathered here?

  The Unknown Chekhov

  After reading “The Lady with the Dog,” Maxim Gorky wrote that, in comparison, “work by other writers seems coarse, written with a log instead of a pen. Everything else has stopped seeming truthful.”