The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015

by Adam Johnson

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Editors’ Note

  Introduction

  Wells Tower. Who Wants to Shoot an Elephant?

  Victor Lodato. Jack, July

  Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal, Sarah Shourd. 780 Days of Solitude

  Christopher Myers. Letter to My Grandnephew

  Anders Carlson-Wee. Dynamite

  Daniel Alarcón. The Contestant

  Rebecca Curtis. The Christmas Miracle

  Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, Leanne Shapton. Wear Areas

  Ammi Keller. Isaac Cameron Hill

  Claudia Rankine. “You are in the dark, in the car . . .”

  Paul Tough. A Speck in the Sea

  Tom McAllister. Things You’re Not Proud Of

  Paul Salopek. Out of Eden Walk

  Joan Wickersham. An Inventory

  Emily Carroll. Our Neighbor’s House

  Inés Fernández Moreno. Miracle in Parque Chas

  Corinne Goria. An Oral History of Neftali Cuello

  Box Brown. Andre the Giant

  Sarah Marshall. Remote Control

  Rachel Zucker. Wish you were here you are

  Lesley Nneka Arimah. The Future Looks Good

  Paul Crenshaw. Chainsaw Fingers

  Alex Mar. Sky Burial

  TJ Jarrett. Four Poems

  Katie Coyle. Fear Itself

  Kawai Strong Washburn. What the Ocean Eats

  Bryan Stevenson. The High Road

  Contributors’ Notes

  The Best American Nonrequired Reading Committee

  Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2014

  About 826 National

  About ScholarMatch

  Read More from The Best American Series®

  About the Editor

  Footnotes

  Copyright © 2015 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

  Editor’s Note copyright © 2015 by Daniel Gumbiner

  Introduction copyright © 2015 by Adam Johnson

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  The Best American Series is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. The Best American Nonrequired Reading is a trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not authorized to grant permission for further uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this book without the permission of their owners. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein. Address requests for permission to make copies of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt material to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  ISSN: 1539-316X

  ISBN: 978-0-544-56963-8

  Cover illustration © Eric Nyquist

  eISBN 978-0-544-57929-3

  v2.0116

  “The Contestant” by Daniel Alarcón. First published in the California Sunday Magazine, October 5, 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Alarcón. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Future Looks Good” by Lesley Nneka Arimah. First published in PANK, January 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Lesley Nneka Arimah. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “780 Days of Solitude” by Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal, and Sarah Shourd. First published in Mother Jones, March/April 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal, and Sarah Shourd. Reprinted by permission of the Foundation for National Progress.

  “Andre the Giant” by Box Brown. From Andre the Giant: Life and Legend. Copyright © 2014 by Box Brown. Reprinted by permission of First Second, an imprint of Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership. All rights reserved.

  “Dynamite” by Anders Carlson-Wee. First published in Ninth Letter, Fall/Winter 2014–2015. Copyright © 2014 by Anders Carlson-Wee. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Our Neighbor’s House” by Emily Carroll. Text and illustrations copyright © 2014 by Emily Carroll. Used by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  “Fear Itself” by Katie Coyle. First published in One Story, Issue #192. Copyright © 2014 by Katie Coyle. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Chainsaw Fingers” by Paul Crenshaw. First published in Jelly Bucket, Number Five. Copyright © 2014 by Paul Crenshaw. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Christmas Miracle” by Rebecca Curtis. Copyright © 2014 by Rebecca Jane Curtis. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

  “An Oral History of Neftali Cuello” by Voice of Witness. First published in Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy edited by Corinne Goria. Copyright © 2014 by Voice of Witness. Reprinted by permission of Voice of Witness.

  “Wear Areas” by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton. From Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, Leanne Shapton, and 639 Others. Copyright © 2014 by Leanne Shapton, Sheila Heti, and Heidi Julavits. Used by permission of Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

  “Meridian, MS 1958: My Grandmother Meditates on the Miracles of the Christ,” “Meridian, MS 1963: My Mother Considers the Mechanics of Flight,” “Kyrie: Notes to the God I Cannot See,” and “We Are Soldiers in the Army of the Lord” by TJ Jarrett. First published in Zion. Copyright © 2014 by TJ Jarrett. Reprinted by permission of Southern Illinois University Press.

  “Isaac Cameron Hill” by Ammi Keller. First published in American Short Fiction, Fall 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Ammi Keller. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Jack, July” by Victor Lodato. First published in The New Yorker, September 22, 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Victor Lodato. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Sky Burial” by Alex Mar. First published in Oxford American, Fall 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Alex Mar. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Remote Control” by Sarah Marshall. First published in the Believer, January 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Sarah Marshall. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Things You’re Not Proud Of” by Tom McAllister. First published in Unstuck. Copyright © 2014 by Tom McAllister. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Separation” by W. S. Merwin. Copyright © 1962, 1963, 2005 by W. S. Merwin. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

  “Miracle in Parque Chas” by Inés Fernández Moreno and translated by Richard V. McGehee. First published in English in the Southern Review, Summer 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Inés Fernández Moreno. Reprinted by permission of the Southern Review.

  “Letter to My Grandnephew” by Christopher Myers. First published in PEN America. Copyright © 2014 by Christopher Myers. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “You are in the dark, in the car . . .” by Claudia Rankine. From Citizen by Claudia Rankine. First published in Poetry. Copyright © 2014 by Claudia Rankine. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press.

  “Tomatoes,” “The Eddy,” “Bang,” “Aftertaste,” “The Hinge,” “Loose Thread on the Silk Road,” and “Mule-ology” by Paul Salopek. First published as part of Out of Eden Walk, for National Geographic. Copyright © 2014 by Paul Salopek. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The High Road” by Bryan Stevenson. First publ
ished in the New York Times Magazine, October 26, 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Bryan Stevenson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “A Speck in the Sea” by Paul Tough. First published in the New York Times Magazine, January 2, 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Paul Tough. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Who Wants to Shoot an Elephant?” by Wells Tower. First published in Gg. Copyright © 2014 by Wells Tower. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “What the Ocean Eats” by Kawai Strong Washburn. First published in McSweeney’s, issue 47. Copyright © 2014 by Kawai Strong Washburn. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “An Inventory” by Joan Wickersham. First published in One Story, Issue number 198. Copyright © 2014 by Joan Wickersham. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “wish you were here you are” by Rachel Zucker. First published in The Pedestrians. Copyright © 2014 by Rachel Zucker. Reprinted by permission of the author and Wave Books.

  Editors’ Note

  It is Monday night and The Best American Nonrequired Reading committee has assembled at the offices of McSweeney’s Publishing in San Francisco. They have met here every Monday for the past year to read over every magazine and journal that was published in 2014 and decide which pieces to include in the book that you are currently holding. It is a cold night, this night, the whole city covered in a creamy layer of fog—but inside the publishing house it is warm and the light is soft and, miraculously, the committee’s chief intern, Taylor Stephens, has brought cookies. It is probably around 7:30 and, at present, there is a great hubbub, mostly because of the cookies, but also because I have just told the committee that they must write an editors’ note.

  “To explain to the world how this process works,” I say.

  “I think we should tell them about the cookies, obviously,” says Marco Ponce, a junior at George Washington High School.

  “Yes,” says Evelyn Pugh, a senior who has just found out she will attend Macalester College next year, “The cookies are certainly a very important part. And the gummy bears. They should know about that time Taylor brought gummy bears.”

  “And the smell of Zola’s fries that she brings to class every day,” says Kelly Lee, a first-year committee member.

  “Man, those always smell so good,” says Samantha Ng, a junior at June Jordan School for Equity.

  “I think they want to know more about the content of the class,” I insist. “What types of things we talked about, what we learned.”

  “Look, Daniel,” says Juan Chicas, a senior at June Jordan, “Class is a very big, very juicy piece of meat. It’s very hard to eat the whole thing in one bite, if you know what I’m saying.”

  There are many nods of affirmation. The committee knows what Juan is saying.

  “You know what I would say,” says Cynthia Van, a junior at George Washington. “I would say that the most important part of BANR is getting to share our opinions. I get to share my opinion and hear everyone else’s opinions about everything we read. I don’t have a single class in school that does that type of thing, and when I come here, everyone discusses everything and we all learn from each other.”

  “Discussion is sick, bro,” says Juan.

  “I would also say that we just pick the things we love,” says Cosmo Comito-Steller, a junior at Lowell High School. “It’s really not that much more complex than that.”

  “The complexity comes in when certain people love things that other people don’t love,” says Cosmo’s brother, Milo, a junior at Balboa High.

  “And that the whole process helps us with our own writing,” says Isaac Schott-Rosenfield, who is just finishing up his first year on the committee. “I wrote a lot of stuff this year that was inspired by things we considered for the book. Sometimes I would even start writing stories on the backs of the print-outs we read in class.”

  “Yeah,” says Zola Rosenfeld, a freshman at Jewish Community High School, “after you read through hundreds of literary magazines you really start to see things differently: you start to hone your taste.”

  There is a lull in the talking and the committee members seem immersed in thought, reflecting on the past year. Then from the corner, Cynthia speaks up,

  “You just learn a lot, you know?” she muses. “Like, I didn’t even know who Andre the Giant was before this class.”

  Everyone laughs. Thanks to Box Brown’s graphic novel, an excerpt of which is featured on page 241, everyone is now a big fan of Andre the Giant. So much so that there has been talk of a Princess Bride viewing party.

  In a half hour the committee will disband for the evening. Some students will be picked up by their parents, others will take the bus home across the city, or hop on trains to the East Bay. These brilliant young committee members are the latest iteration of a long line of committees that stretch back to 2002, when Dave Eggers first had the wonderful idea to let a group of high school students edit an anthology of writing. Today, Dave no longer edits the anthology, although his spirit and intuition still serve as a guiding force for the committee. The editorship now rotates on a yearly basis and this year, we were honored to have Pulitzer Prize-winning author Adam Johnson serve as our commander-in-chief. He visited the class and spoke to the students about writing and helped us select the stories that are included in this book. The committee was also aided by a group of students at 826 Michigan who met weekly, just like the San Francisco committee, and sent along excellent recommendations.

  As a former member of the committee myself, I can tell you that it is a very challenging but incredibly empowering experience to be given the responsibility of putting together an anthology like this. Sophie Halperin, a senior on the committee, summed it up well when she wrote about BANR for her college application personal statement: “Oftentimes in school I am asked to analyze a work, but I am never asked what I think about it. That is because the pieces we are assigned to read are considered classics. It has already been decided that those pieces are worth reading. But this time, I’m the one who decides what value a work has.” This is the uncommon and instructive challenge that students on the BANR committee face and, this year, as with years past, they have risen marvelously to the occasion. We have found value in every piece in this book and we sincerely hope you do as well. Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading.

  DANIEL GUMBINER and the BANR Committee

  San Francisco, June 2015

  INTRODUCTION

  IN HIGH SCHOOL, I read the standard-issue texts: The Red Badge of Courage, Of Mice and Men, The Old Man and the Sea. They were good books and they interested me, but when I read on my own, I reached for Stephen King or my Mom’s James Clavell novels. My most literary commitment was a subscription to Omni Magazine. Unfortunately, I was the most bookish of my early ’80s teen posse. We spent our free periods in the parking lot of a church across from school—in an effort to lure us in with their cool attitude, the pastors had declared the lot a hassle-free haven for clove smokers, metalheads and assorted hood sitters. Instead of meeting for a book club, we were the kind who took turns pulling each other on water skis down Arizona-hot irrigation canals with ropes attached to the roll bars of our pickups. We spent our free time souping up engines, shooting up the desert, and throwing keg parties in the basement of a decommissioned alcohol-rehabilitation facility where my buddy lived with his twenty-one siblings, half siblings and step siblings.

  College is where I would discover literature, as if for the first time, and more importantly, it was where I would first know the deep satisfaction of writing. But I didn’t go there directly. I spent a few years forming concrete on mid-rise buildings and industrial construction projects. I worked on bridges, tunnels, a couple corporate headquarters and even the parking structure at Fiesta Mall. It’s hard to stay in a Hilton after you’ve built a couple of them. Looking back, though, I can see that during these years, stories and storytelling were a central part of my life. I witnessed many story worthy events. I saw a falling piece of lumber cleanly r
emove the ear of a man working next to me. I heard, but didn’t see, the sound of a falling rat-tail file going through the bicep of a pipefitter I knew. I’ll never forget the blinding, explosive light that resulted from a crane boom lowering into the high-power lines that fed downtown Phoenix. There were things I didn’t witness yet were so vividly described to me by those who did that they worked into my mind forever, as when a worker on our Buckeye jobsite took his life with a worm-drive Skil saw.

  I remember these episodes not as life that I lived, but as stories I recall in which I was a character. Some of the best stories were the simpler ones—a jug of hot urine that fell twelve stories, an exploding jar of mayonnaise, the crane operator who loved to drop Kentucky Fried Chicken bones a hundred feet down to our hardhats. Sometimes I became the subject of stories other people told—when a foreman foolishly allowed me to operate the Manitowoc crane, for example. (Its braking system was counterintuitive.) Or when I was foolishly allowed to operate the Cat 992D loader. (It was really hard to see around a twelve-yard bucket.)

  If I felt like a character, the men I spent my shifts with truly were characters, like the millwright who kept a sawed-off, pistol-grip shotgun in his toolbox, each barrel of which was filled with a half roll of dimes. Or the cement finisher who tried to hide the fact that he was going blind. Or the patient, thoughtful carpenter who had two wives—they always packed him the best lunches! Of course there were the oddballs, addicts, ex-cons and preachers, guys who told stories that revolved around buried money, airport lockers, bad checks and women who were onto them. And then there were stories workers brought from other jobs and swapped like wampum. These were tall tales of lost lives, betrayals, epic heartaches, reversals of fortune, random fates and the ever popular revenge narratives.

  I’ll admit it’s hard to keep straight which stories happened to me, which I witnessed, which I heard direct testimony about and which were communal lore. But keeping such things straight doesn’t really interest me. I loved all those stories, their rightness and trueness, and it didn’t matter to me if they were verifiable or not. I trust the vagaries of my own memory least of all, and as my identity has changed over the years (from a lost, yahoo of a young man to a professor at a fancy university) I fear my narrative keeps warping into alignment. I wouldn’t have taken a different path, and I wouldn’t trade my time in the sun with guys who went by names like Grover and Nuggs and Doggy Bear. But I’ve always felt I missed some critical years of reading. Who would I have become if, rather than pulpy jobsite yarns, I’d been exposed to writers like Wells Tower, Rebecca Curtis or Daniel Alarcón? Who might any of us have become if as high school freshmen we were invited to read, discuss, debate and adjudicate literature in the most serious of terms. That question is at the heart of The Best American Nonrequired Reading project, set in motion by Dave Eggers.