WSJ’s Review of Best American Short Stories 2009: We Like Big Authors and Traditional Realism

I’m a little (okay, a lot) disturbed by the review of this book in the Wall Street Journal.  I get the newest anthology every year for Christmas, and while a lot of the stories are the slice-of-life kind that bore the pants off of me, some of the stories are terrific and the writers are mostly masters of their craft.

But that said, the WSJ‘s (expected, yes) unabashed praise of and relief at the return to the mainstream for the anthology is just a little bit disconcerting. Here’s the paragraph that really ticked me off:

Editor Alice Sebold—in collaboration with series editor Heidi Pitlor, who did the preliminary winnowing—doesn’t offer reasons for her choices, but she has put together a collection that is more uniformly satisfying than some “Best” outings have been in recent years. There appears to be less emphasis on experimental prose, which is always a hit-or-miss proposition, and the authors generally are writers with proven track records (Richard Powers, Annie Proulx, Joseph Epstein). Fewer unknowns are suddenly elevated to the year’s top rank, though Steve De Jarnatt and Namwali Serpell made the cut with their first published stories. This anthology feels rooted in the real world, with characters you might live near or see at the store.

Yes, thank god we hardly have to read any stories this time from those “unknowns.”  Thank god the stories are “rooted in the real world.”  Thank god for less emphasis on that weirdo “experimental prose.”

I mean, WTF, WSJ? Wouldn’t a “something for everyone” approach be a better bet than a “something for people that read stories maybe a few times a year?” Okay, obviously the answer to that is, no.

Still–people have broader minds, I think, than the Journal would like to give them credit for. How to otherwise explain the popularity of wizards and vampires and werewolves in our books as of late? These are not stories or characters rooted in the real world–in fact, I’d guess that many people love those books that shall not be named precisely because they’re fantasy, an escape from the kind-of-dreary-lately-real-world.

So why wouldn’t readers of short stories be open to fantastical characters and tales? Is it because a certain segment of the literary world counts itself as somehow above the fantastic? As if realism were the height of literary achievement, the photo reproduction over the painting created? I don’t know the answer, and I should probably stop babbling at some point since my lunch has been over for ten minutes now.

Here’s what I know: I am a serious reader, and I would rather read anything but straight-up, slice-of-life realism, written in a traditional way. Please give me characters and situations I’ve never encountered before, either near my apartment or at the store. They can be realistic, but let them be unusual. Let them be rare. That’s why I read and why I write.