The Best American Short Stories 2020 Read online

  My assignment from editor Nicole Angeloro and Heidi was to read 120 stories Heidi had selected from almost 200 magazines and to pick 21 that were worthy of publication—​20 that would be printed, plus an alternate if one of my picks ended up not qualifying. I received them in three batches of 40 each and read them between November 1, 2019, and March 1, 2020. Early on, I almost emailed Heidi to ask if she thought it was important to finish reading every story even if I wasn’t impressed with the first few pages. Then I thought, Curtis, for Christ’s sake, you have one job. Of course I needed to finish reading every story even if I wasn’t impressed with the first few pages!

  My only other rule for myself was that I couldn’t Google a writer until after I’d read his or her story. Of the 120 stories, the majority were by people whose names I’d never heard. In some cases the stories by writers I’d never heard of had been published in magazines I didn’t know existed. This combination made me feel both ignorant and exhilarated; it gave me some of the same reassurance I experienced back in 1992, offering the promise that there is still much to discover. In fact, there really wasn’t a correlation between the renown of a writer or publication and the quality of a story. Yes, stories from The New Yorker were often superb, but I quickly found that a lot of stories were superb.

  As it turned out, I need not have worried about struggling to find 21 stories I liked, and in fact the problem was the opposite. Of the 120 stories, I would estimate that I disliked about 10. I thought about 40 were somewhere between not bad and good. I thought about 30 were very good. And I thought about 40 were great.

  Forty great stories! Isn’t that amazing! And another 30 very good ones! Aren’t I lucky? Isn’t this thrilling?

  Heidi—​who, it cannot be said enough, is smart and thoughtful and funny and a true pleasure to work with in all ways—​mentioned that she assigned letter grades to stories: A, A–, B+, and so on. I tried this with a few, but I soon grew worried that such small gradations reflected the time of day when I was reading, or my blood sugar level, more than they reflected the quality of the work. I then decided to divide the work into the categories of yes, maybe, and no. Admittedly, there were some I labeled maybe, probably yes or maybe, probably no, and a few got my highest praise, which was yes! In the end there were far too many yeses. That I could have easily filled two anthologies was a surprising and wonderful problem.

  I don’t think I ever went from thinking a story wasn’t very good at first to thinking it was great by the end, but a few times I went from thinking a story wasn’t very good to thinking it was kind of good—​that it had some redeeming features, made some interesting choices, arrived at a different place than it had departed from. In other cases, stories started very strongly but faltered by way of unlikely plot twists or the absence of any real payoff.

  Under the best circumstances—​and again, the best circumstances arose often—​a story did many things well, all the way through. My favorite feeling as a reader is the confidence that the writer is in control, is one step (or more) ahead of me, possesses a knowing sensibility that he or she is unfurling as the narrative demands.

  Another of the unexpected pleasures of guest editing was that the stories taught lessons cumulatively that I don’t think I’d have learned based on reading any individual story or even reading a collection of stories by one writer. If you had asked me in October 2019, What makes a short story succeed? I’d have said, Whatever the writer can get away with. Granted, there are certain foundational ingredients, but I don’t really believe in rules. In graduate school, my adviser Ethan Canin taught my classmates and me to think of fiction in terms of structure (the order of scenes, what happens in them, how information is revealed), character (what we learn about the people depicted through their actions, observations, and dialogue), and language (how the sentences do or don’t work). This deceptively simple framework proved to be life-changingly useful for me (thanks again, Ethan!), and certainly it influences me as a reader too. But beyond this usually invisible scaffolding, I would have said as late as last fall that what makes a story succeed or fail is nebulous. Story by story, however, certain patterns emerged:

  A good ending, a good last paragraph, can make a story better by several magnitudes. A bad ending can steal defeat from the jaws of victory. There are at least two stories that I loved and loved and loved up until the end, and the last paragraphs didn’t make me hate them, but they were off-putting enough that, given the surplus of excellent work to choose from, the weak endings felt like a sufficient reason for elimination.

  Unremarkable stories routinely contain sentences that are shatteringly beautiful or insightful. I won’t give examples because to do so would be a backhanded compliment, or maybe just a vaguely flattering insult. But examples abound.

  I personally do not love stories about violence, especially male violence inflicted on females. I also personally do not love stories about twenty- or thirtysomethings in Brooklyn. But I love being proven wrong about what I think I do and don’t love. Among my twenty picks are a story about male violence and a story about twenty- and thirtysomethings in Brooklyn.

  I personally do love stories about a small thing happening in a person’s life, a thing that might seem trivial from the outside but whose stakes are raised because of how much it matters to the protagonist. Since the world often deems events in women’s lives, especially young women’s or girls’ lives, trivial, such stories are likely to have a female protagonist.

  A sense of humor is always a bonus. As with dinner companions, so it is with short stories.

  A dystopian story must not merely be dystopian; it must also be a story. Premise can only get you so far.

  I suppose, speaking of dystopias, that this is the moment when I ought to address the intersection of Short Fiction and How We Live Now. Of the 120 stories I read, at least a dozen could be classified as dystopian. Almost all were environmentally focused, reflecting the effects of climate change in a usually not-so-distant future. Indeed, in 2019, McSweeney’s devoted an entire issue to speculative fiction about climate change, featuring ten stories set in 2040, and I’m still haunted by two of those stories—​“Save Yourself” by Abbey Mei Otis, and “The Rememberers” by Rachel Heng—​though I didn’t ultimately include either.

  The frequency and darkness of dystopian stories injected a jittery aspect into my reading. Undeniably, writers are worried, and I certainly share the common belief that writers are either prescient or just paying attention. And then, by the time I had made my selections, we—​all of us—​were in the midst of a global pandemic. At the time of this writing, in late March 2020, no one knows what will happen. As I am not a public health expert, I will refrain from speculating.

  But I will say this: as I type these words, it feels like life has become difficult for everyone, and it’s impossible to know what state any of us will be in when this volume is published in October. I hope that reading these stories will in some small way offset or diminish the ongoing difficulty—​that they will delight or reassure or at least distract you, that they will remind you of what people have in common, that they will give you the abstract but irreducible and nourishing thing that art can provide. Even before the pandemic, they gave that to me. Truly, as I read the stories—​mostly in bed before going to sleep at night, occasionally during the day sitting in a chair—​I thought what I’d thought in 1992 in France: Oh my God. This exists! These stories are so good. They’re so interesting. There are so many of them, all in the same place. They’re windows into emotions I have and haven’t had, into other settings and circumstances and observations and relationships. I’m so grateful to live on the same planet and breathe the same air as the magically talented individuals who crafted these tales.

  Below, I offer the specific reasons I loved the stories I ultimately chose. I recommend reading the stories before you read the reasons, but again, I defer here to your free will.

  I loved “Godmother Tea” by Selena Anderson because it sho
wed me how enthrallingly magical realism, daily despair, and class commentary can mix together.

  I loved “The Apartment” by T. C. Boyle because it took a story I vaguely knew, injected it with emotion and inevitability, and told it in such a way that my familiarity with the story made reading it more rather than less suspenseful.

  I loved “A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed” by Jason Brown because it depicts the subculture of WASPy families in a way that’s hilariously satirical and totally realistic at the same time.

  I loved “Sibling Rivalry” by Michael Byers because Byers’s futuristic world is utterly natural and convincing and forces me to reflect uncomfortably on how concepts like family and parenthood are defined in the present.

  I loved “The Nanny” by Emma Cline because the main character, whom Cline makes distinct and complex, falls into the category of person routinely stripped of any real identity in media reports.

  I loved “Halloween” by Marian Crotty because her portrayal of teenage longing and romantic tension is so real and alive and because the grandmother is irresistible.

  I loved “Something Street” by Carolyn Ferrell because a few years ago I thought to myself, Maybe I should write fiction about this particular disgraced public figure, and then I thought, Actually, I shouldn’t, but someone should, and a few paragraphs into the story, I thought, Oh my God, Carolyn Ferrell did it, and then as I kept reading, I thought, Oh my God, and she did it in such a savvy, complex, satisfying way.

  I loved “This Is Pleasure” by Mary Gaitskill because its nuance made me feel conflicting sympathies while challenging my belief that, at the (literal) end of the day, I’d really rather not curl up with a #MeToo-themed short story.

  I loved “In the Event” by Meng Jin because first I thought it was a story about dystopian dread, then I thought it was a story about relationship problems, then I thought it was a story about the 2016 election, and actually it was all three, blended seamlessly.

  I loved “The Children” by Andrea Lee because its setting was fascinating and its depiction of class was so sophisticated and its last line took my breath away.

  I loved “Rubberdust” by Sarah Thankam Mathews because its details of childhood are so specific and weird and recognizable and familiar and because a story about being a kid in school turns on its head most of the way through and becomes meta while still unfolding as a story about being a kid in school.

  I loved “It’s Not You” by Elizabeth McCracken because I underlined the sentences in it I thought were clever or funny and by the end I’d underlined about 50 percent of the entire story.

  I loved “Liberté” by Scott Nadelson because it shows a public figure I knew little about interacting with another public figure I knew little about and depicts them in such intriguing ways that I thought, Wait, what’s true here? and felt compelled to Google them the minute I finished to find out.

  I loved “Howl Palace” by Leigh Newman because of its rich sense of place and the complexity of its much-married sixtysomething narrator.

  I loved “The Nine-Tailed Fox Explains” by Jane Pek because it won me over from the first line and kept me riveted with its flawless interweaving of ancient myth and mundane contemporary life.

  I loved “The Hands of Dirty Children” by Alejandro Puyana because it tells a heartbreaking tale in an unsentimental way, and it tells it from the inside, so deeply and immersively.

  I loved “Octopus VII” by Anna Reeser because of its spot-on depiction of creative young people and various kinds of privilege, including the privileges of money and gender.

  I loved “Enlightenment” by William Pei Shih because who among us hasn’t had a thoroughly misguided crush that feels appropriate in the moment? And because the story’s protagonist could be irredeemably pathetic, but Shih chooses instead to make his choices recognizable while pulling off the feat of making the perspective of the protagonist’s foil equally recognizable and understandable.

  I loved “Kennedy” by Kevin Wilson because the story is horrifying and tender in equal measures.

  And I loved “The Special World” by Tiphanie Yanique because it captures the distinct feeling of being a college freshman, of how foreign and cheesy and exciting that rite of passage can be, and also because the story made me laugh.

  Among the stories that didn’t make the final cut, I loved “Goodbye, Sugar Land” by Becky Mandelbaum and “The Teenagers” by Miriam Cohen and “Wolves of Karelia” by Arna Bontemps Hemenway and “Cut” by Catherine Lacey and “Marrow” by Adam O’Fallon Price and “Dear Shadows” by Joanna Pearson and “Prepare Her” by Genevieve Plunkett and “Neighbor” by Daniel Torday and “Binoculars” by Martha Wilson. I wish I could share all these with you. Although I can’t, the places where they were published are listed in the back of this volume, and they’re worth tracking down.

  A few final thoughts: In looking now at the 1991 edition that was my entry into the world of BASS, I’m struck by the fact that all twenty of its contributors appear to be white, as I am. Meanwhile, as I read the stories from 2019, there was a bounty of excellent stories by writers of color (though I don’t think I always knew the race of stories’ authors). I am glad and grateful for this shift, which presumably has more to do with changes in gatekeeping than with talent; that is, I’m sure the talent was always there. Without a multiplicity of viewpoints—​not just in terms of race but also in terms of sexuality, geography, and age—​this anthology would be considerably less interesting. Sure, there’s a place in my heart for a story about a white man having a midlife crisis, but there are a lot of other places in my heart for a lot of other stories.

  Since 1992, I’ve dipped in and out of reading The Best American Short Stories; during various years I’ve read all of the stories, none of them, and some of them. In some years I thought a high proportion of the stories were outstanding. In other years I thought, I guess not that many good stories were published this year. At the time I assumed that, as with grapes made into wine, certain crops of stories were better or worse than others, but I now suspect this isn’t accurate. Instead it’s probably that the idiosyncratic taste of a guest editor is sometimes more and sometimes less aligned with my own idiosyncratic taste as a reader.

  Here’s hoping our idiosyncrasies, your and mine, align this year. If not, here’s hoping there are more years, more idiosyncrasies, and more stories for all of us.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  SELENA ANDERSON

  Godmother Tea

  FROM Oxford American

  Just like my mama. She rolled up with a gift: a life-sized mirror edged by baroque curling leaves, with slender gold feet that somehow supported both its shimmering weight and mine. My mother has a knack for messy presents. Day passes to the gym, Merry Maids coupons, flat irons with built-in conditioner. This, however, was especially rude. A mirror would only reflect me, plus all my sulky auras, plus the cultivated environment that had drawn me this way.

  My mother had refused help as she dragged the mirror into my apartment herself, claiming it had the power of making the place look bigger. But I didn’t want anything of mine to look bigger. The center of my apartment was empty, as spotless as a bald spot, and I liked that. That was my choice. I’d gotten used to that. But now my mother’s charity of inherited furniture crowded the room. There was a Chesterfield sofa, end tables with bloated glass lamps, a dining table with a fleet of cane-back chairs, and a rolltop desk that wore a pair of pink soft-grip dumbbells like a tiara. None of this stuff was mine, but at the same time, it was all I had.

  I know a lot of people just starting out don’t have anything, so I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but to my eye the mirror only doubled what I had never really wanted to begin with. Now there was hardly any space to move around. I could never tell my mother this—​especially as she was positioning it between the windows and cleaning the glass with newspaper in quick, squealing arcs—​so I’m telling you, it was all beginning to be a b
it much.

  But since the mirror was standing there, I’d sometimes creep up late at night to wordlessly articulate a complaint I’d been having with myself. The objects of my apartment looked on as I stood balletically, searching my figure for bad news. My reflection belonged to too many other people—​mainly the people who used to own all this stuff. Through me, my ancestors gave eyes to my jacked-up third position. I’d switch to tree pose, clutching a glass of rosé to my chest like a good-luck charm. My dead relatives studied me in loving disapproval. I’d smile back until it became impossible to recognize myself.

  Even my people who are still living don’t let me suffer the way I want to. A lot of them, much older and less bothered than myself, express pride in the way I’m turning out. My mother’s friends talk about me like I was a dish that was difficult to get just right, but the special ingredients of an elite social circle, good home training, and private education have turned me into a well-spoken young woman full of potential.

  After my mother had given me the mirror, we walked down the street to a cafeteria in my neighborhood. At the table I tried explaining to her what it feels like every time a member of her generation pays me a compliment. “It never feels good,” I said, “when a compliment is self-reflective.”

  “But that’s what a compliment is, Joy,” she said. “A compliment is a reflection of what I see in you that I wish I had.”

  My mother was still giving me eyes, trying, like everybody else in the room, to dissolve sugar in iced tea. She was still stuck on “self-reflective” and what it meant for me to use a word like that in her presence. Usually my mother comes right out and says so if she thinks I’m sounding too white, but when she senses my mood has joined us, pulling up a chair like an unexpected guest, she acts totally unlike herself and holds back. It doesn’t make sense that a simple act of decency like this would make matters worse, but even these days, a fact is still a fact.