Read Any Good Stories Lately?

Short stories are an underrated literary form. Short stories are like hors d'oeuvres. Some are kind of crappy, like a slice of Cracker Barrel cheese on a Ritz cracker, but you have them anyway because they're easy and filling. Some can be a bit on the pretentious side, like...I don't know, a hard-boiled humming bird egg nestled in steamed Peruvian orchid leaves. Some writers are fancy for the sake of being fancy and it just doesn't work. The story is lost in the way the story is told. But a really good short story can take just the write combination of great-but-simple ingredients and become something memorable. Like my famous brie/cranberry/pecan pizza! Always a hit at our holiday parties.

OK, I'm stretching that metaphor a bit, but the point is I like short stories and I'm suggesting a few anthologies that I've read in the past year or so. Incidentally, on a practical level, these books are great if a)you're a slow reader, like me and b)you don't always have much time to read, like me. I'd recommend all three of these books, but I'm putting then in order from 1 (recommend) to 3 (highly recommend).

1) Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem
I actually read this about two years ago, so it's not exactly fresh in my mind. But I know I liked it, and I liked it enough to read some of Lethem's other work (like the novel Motherless Brooklyn, which is excellent). Some of the stories are pure fantasy, some are quite realistic, and some are a blurry smudge between the two. One story did stick with me, and that's "This Shape We're In" (not available in the hardcover edition, apparently). This story could have easily been a Twilight Zone episode...in fact I'd be surprised if there isn't a film student rewriting it as a script right now.


2) Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
Man, these are some creepy stories. Well, not all of them, but a few are creepy to the max. A few are light fantasy, like the first story called "The Faery Handbag", about a village of people who, um, live in a handbag. The title story is, as the kids say these days, very meta. It's the kind of story-within-a-story story that makes you want to re-read the story. Then there's "Catskin", which is like something the Brothers Grimm might write, if they were on crack. And then there's "Some Zombie Contingency Plans", which was easily one of the more disturbing stories I've read in quite some time. It reminded me of one of my favorite Roald Dahl stories, "Pig." (While I'm thinking of it, I'd recommend pretty much any Raold Dahl anthology, as well). As I write this post, it reminds me that I've been meaning to get Link's other short story anthology, Stranger Things Happen, for a while now.

3) St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
This is the book that prompted this post, being the anthology that I finished most recently. I have to shake my head in disbelief that this is Russell's first book, and she's only 26 years old. These stories represent some of the best prose I've read in ages. There was a time, in my English major days, when I often felt envious of good writers. As I've gotten older, I suppose I've become a bit jaded, or perhaps just a more mature reader, and I can usually just appreciate a book for what it is. But I caught myself thinking, "Man, I wish I'd written this," several times as I devoured these stories.

Russell pulls off a neat trick. At first, these stories appear to take place in the real world, often on an unnamed island that one gets the impression is somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. Then there's usually some element of fantasy, but the stories are never about that element of fantasy. When two young brothers happen upon a pair of magic goggles that allow them to see ghosts underwater, they don't seem all that surprised. In "Haunting Olivia," the goggles merely become a tool for them to search for their sister, who was lost at sea after floating away on a giant crab shell (of course). And again, the prose is good enough to eat. Take these first few sentences from the story "Z.Z.'s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers":

Emma and I are curled together in the basket of the Thomas Edison Insomnia
Balloon, our breath coming in soft quick bursts. I am stroking Emma's cheek.
I am spooning amber gobs of soporific dough into Emma's mouth, cadged from
Zorba's medicinal larder in anticipation of just such an occasion.

My only warning would be that if you need your stories tied up neatly at the end, this is definitely not the anthology for you. Most of these stories throw you right into the narrative and you have to fill in a lot of gaps yourself. You might actually have to use a little imagination (gasp!). The lack of closure may get on some people's nerves, but I think part of the reason these stories have stuck in my head is because I kept thinking about them afterwards, creating my own endings.

For a more professional (though incomplete in the online version) look at this book, here's The Believer review that got me interested in the first place.