I just bought a new short story anthology, Contemporary American Short Fiction, ed. Joyce Carol Oates, and I'd appreciate any suggestions on which authors or stories I should read first--it's a very fat book. Palahniuk's "Escort" wowed me in the store--in spite of some liberties with syntax and grammar that struck me as unnecessary. D. Eisenberg's story, "The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor," intrigues me, but I haven't yet put all the pieces together.
FYI, a few of the other authors I know and expect to love again are: Bass, Baxter, Bender, Dybek, Ford, Hempel, Jones (Edward P.), Lahiri, and Wolff (T.).
I also got Best American Essays 2008, and would appreciate the same kind of info on it if you happen to know its contents or authors.
All for now.
Jun 11, 2009
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Too bad they didn't think they could include the Canadian Alice Munro. I noticed that Best American Stories 2008 did include her. Do you think they should have--in either book?
Well, it stretches conventional definitions of "American," doesn't it?
And if you include one Canadian, where do you stop? Shall we exclude Margaret Atwood and others? Conversely, is Rushdie opening himself to the charge, in editing Best American 2008, that there aren't enough top-notch stories written in the U.S. to fill a book?
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