PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011: The Best Stories of the Year [ペーパーバック]

A characteristically strong collection with a wide range of fictional techniques and stylistic choices. It would be difficult to find a "workshop story" in this collection (even though one story, Capo Crucet's gem "How To Leave Hialeah," takes us inside an MFA workshop and many of the stories are written by writers who teach in writing programs, have come from writing programs or both). In her intro to the collection, Laura Furman describes these stories as containing "end-of-the world honesty" that often explores isolation, destruction and violence, and though Furman is right about the intensity of these stories and their ability to disrupt and engage, they might also simply be described as stories that lead us behind the velvet rope into hidden worlds.

Many of the stories travel in time or geography: Jim Shepherd takes us to 1939 Switzerland and a man who is researching avalanches; Tamas Dobozy gives us WWII Hungary; Lily Tuck takes us on an Antarctic cruise; Susan Minot shows us doomed affair in Kenya; Lori Ostlund gives us a couple teaching English in Malaysia; Jane Delury takes us to Madagascar and the complex love affair between a teacher and her student; Leslie Parry tells the story of a mute actor in a silent film; David Means follows Midwestern hobos; Matthew Neill Null goes back in time to follow a door-to-door salesmen in early West Virginia. Other stories leave the real world and slip into the fantastical--Chris Adrian describes a black square that you can go into but never return from, Lynn Freed's tells the fable of a man who systematically collects, trains and rapes children and the feral child who disables this system; Helen Simpson provides the haunting diary of a woman trying to survive the apocalypse. Some stories make the familiar new and strange: Elizabeth Tallent gives us a man trying to save his son from his bad choices in a dying mill town in California, Capo Crucet follows a young woman from Miami to academia in New England and the Midwest and her efforts to retain her identity in the process; Mark Slouka goes hiking in Washington State with a divorced man and his young son; Adam Foulds shows us a gay minister, his inattentive clubbing lover and his desire to be a parent; Judy Doenges takes us into the world of the meth trade; Kenneth Calhoun follows a young man who is smitten with the old men blues musicians who let him perform in their band.

And yet, in spite of the vividness with these worlds are revealed none of these stories are easy, confessional reads but stories that require slow reading and close attention to what is said and what is elided. Many stories play with reader expectations through language, time, and narrative distance--each story setting up its own rules for how it should be read. This collection is not just an enjoyable set of stories but an education in what the short story can do.

Anyone interested in short stories should be buying this collection (and Best American Short Stories, too) every year, just to give yourself an intelligently chosen sampler of what's going on out there. And if, like me, you write fiction and hope to get it published, this becomes an even more essential purchase.

I have a story in this anthology, so I'm about as biased as one could be, I suppose. But I wanted to say what a privilege it is to have a story included among this group of brilliant, moving, and very diverse selection of short fiction. You don't see the usual suspects every year in the O.Henry. This is a testament to Laura Furman's discerning eye and her determination to stand firm as the true editor of the anthology, choosing stories that she (as a fine writer and teacher and critic) believes worthy of inclusion. So, forgive me for a bit of what might seem self-promotion (although since almost no one counts my story as one of their favorites, maybe I'm allowed -- I don't use emoticons but that was meant to be self-deprecating humor), but I think this is a wonderful anthology and I'm honored to be a part of it.

This was my fourth volume of The PEN / O. Henry Prize Stories. I am always pleased to find the variety of styles and stories that I came across in my first venture. I enjoy being able to emerge my self for a half-hour or so in an world that is often so different from what I have experienced. I often find these stories entering dreamlike into my mind with actions and events witnessed with a surprising variety of emotions and thoughts. So yes, do yourself a favor and try this series. They are a engaging way to quickly get into "mini" worlds that are filled with with well expressed moments of the human experience. You too will say More Please.