Best American Short Stories 2001

Foreword IN THE 1942 VOLUME of The Best American Short Stories, the anthology's new annual editor, Martha Foley, attempted to define the form. "A good short story," she wrote, "is a story which is not too long and which gives the reader the feeling he has undergone a memorable experience." Over the past eleven years, during my own tenure as annual editor of this eighty-six-year-old series, I've run across numerous other writers'attempts to come up with some sort of standard by which to measure the short story. Few have managed to add much to Ms. Foley's democratic and rather obvious criteria. At symposiums and writers'conferences, I've learned to duck and weave around the inevitable question "What do you look for in a short story?" I wish I knew! Heart? Soul? Truth? Voice? Integrity of intention and skill in execution? The answer is all of the above, and none of the above. For I don't really "look" for anything; when a story works, I know it in my gut, not in my head, and only then - after laughing, after brushing away a tear, after taking a moment to catch my breath and return to the here and now - do I set about analyzing the successes and failures of a writer's effort. It would certainly be nice to have a checklist, a foolproof grading system, a tally sheet of pluses and minuses. But reading is a subjective activity, even for those of us who are fortunate enough to read for a living. We editors may read more pages than the average American, and we may read faster, but when it comes right down to it, I believe we all read for the same reason: in order to test our own knowledge of life and to enlarge on it. Out of the three thousand or so short stories I read in any given year, I may file two hundred away. And I always marvel at how precious this stash of chosen fiction seems to me; these are the stories that, for one reason or another, exerted some kind of hold on the priorities of my heart. Even now, I have boxes of old stories, going back a decade and more, stacked up in the basement; I've saved every file card I've filled out since 1990 as well - a treasure trove of stories, a king's ransom of human wisdom caught and held on those hundreds of moldering pages. When it comes to cleaning closets, I'm ruthless. But those stories . . . well, how could I throw them away? Who knows when a particular bit of fiction will prove useful? Someday, I think, someone will need that story about the emotional roller coaster of new motherhood; or this one, which reminds us what sixteen years old really feels like; or that one, which could help a friend prepare for death . . . Toward year's end, I sift through the current piles and begin to ship batches of tales off to the guest editor, always wondering whether he or she will share my tastes and predilections and curious to know whether the narrative voice that whispered so urgently in my ear will speak with as much power to another. Truth be told, it is an anxious time. Just as, when I was a teenager, I wanted my parents to agree that my boyfriend was indeed Prince Charming, I can't help but hope that the guest editor will share my passion for the year's collection of short story suitors. I have no clue about Barbara Kingsolver's taste in men, but I discovered right away that she and I could fall in love with the same short stories. And when her introduction to this volume came spooling through my fax machine, I stood there reading it page by page, nodding in agreement with her discoveries and full of gratitude for the pickiness (her word) and devotion she brought to this task of [read more]