The Best American Short Stories 2013

by Elizabeth Strout

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Introduction

  The Provincials

  Bravery

  Malaria

  Miss Lora

  Horned Men

  The Third Dumpster

  Encounters with Unexpected Animals

  Magic Man

  The Chair

  A Voice in the Night

  Referential

  Train

  Chapter Two

  Nemecia

  Philanthropy

  The Semplica-Girl Diaries

  The World to Come

  The Wilderness

  The Tunnel, or The News from Spain

  Breatharians

  Contributors’ Notes

  Other Distinguished Stories of 2012

  Editorial Addresses of American and Canadian Magazines Publishing Short Stories

  About the Editor

  Copyright © 2013 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

  Introduction copyright © 2013 by Elizabeth Strout

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  The Best American Series® and The Best American Short Stories® are registered trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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  www.hmhbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

  ISSN 0067-6233

  ISBN 978-0-547-55482-2

  ISBN 978-0-547-55483-9 (pbk.)

  eISBN 978-0-547-89836-0

  v1.1013

  “The Provincials” by Daniel Alarcón. First published in Granta, Winter 2012 (No. 118). Copyright © 2012 by Daniel Alarcón. From the forthcoming The King Is Always Above the People: Stories by Daniel Alarcón. Used by permission of Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  “Bravery” by Charles Baxter. First published in Tin House, Spring 2012 (Vol. 14, No. 1). Copyright © 2012 by Charles Baxter. Reprinted by permission of Darhansoff & Verrill literary agents.

  “Malaria” by Michael Byers. First published in Bellevue Literary Review, Fall 2012 (Vol. 12, No. 2). Copyright © 2012 by Michael Byers. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Miss Lora” from This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz, copyright © 2012 by Junot Díaz. Used by permission of Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. First published in The New Yorker, April 23, 2012.

  “Horned Men” by Karl Taro Greenfeld. First published in ZYZZYVA, Fall 2012 (No. 95). Copyright © 2012 by Karl Taro Greenfeld. Reprinted by permission of ZYZZYVA.

  “The Third Dumpster” by Gish Jen. First published in Granta, Summer 2012 (No. 120). Copyright © 2012 by Gish Jen. Reprinted by permission of Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC.

  “Encounters with Unexpected Animals” by Bret Anthony Johnston. First published in Esquire, March 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Bret Anthony Johnston. Reprinted by permission of Bret Anthony Johnston.

  “Magic Man” by Sheila Kohler. First published in the Yale Review, Spring 2012 (Vol. 100, No. 2). Copyright © 2012 by Sheila Kohler. Reprinted by permission of the author and her literary agent, Robin Straus Agency, Inc.

  “The Chair” by David Means. First published in the Paris Review, Spring 2012 (No. 200). Copyright © 2012 by David Means. Reprinted by permission of the Wylie Agency, LLC.

  “A Voice in the Night” by Steven Millhauser. First published in The New Yorker, December 10, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Steven Millhauser. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Referential” by Lorrie Moore. First published in The New Yorker, May 28, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Lorrie Moore. Reprinted by permission of Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC.

  “Train” from Dear Life by Alice Munro, copyright © 2013 by Alice Munro. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc., for permission. First published in Harper’s Magazine, April 2012.

  “Chapter Two” by Antonya Nelson. First published in The New Yorker, March 26, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Antonya Nelson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Nemecia” by Kirstin Valdez Quade. First published in Narrative Magazine, Fall 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Kirstin Valdez Quade. Reprinted by permission of Denise Shannon Literary Agency, Inc.

  “Philanthropy” by Suzanne Rivecca. First published in Granta, Summer 2012 (No. 120). Copyright © 2012 by Suzanne Rivecca. Reprinted by permission of Suzanne Rivecca.

  “The Semplica-Girl Diaries” from Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders, copyright © 2013 by George Saunders. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc., for permission. First published in The New Yorker, October 15, 2012.

  “The World to Come” by Jim Shepard. First published in One Story, March 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Jim Shepard. Reprinted by permission of Jim Shepard.

  “The Wilderness” by Elizabeth Tallent. First published in Threepenny Review, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Elizabeth Tallent. Reprinted by permission of the Joy Harris Literary Agency, Inc.

  “The Tunnel, or The News from Spain” from The News from Spain by Joan Wickersham, copyright © 2012 by Joan Wickersham. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc., for permission. First published in Glimmer Train, Issue 82, Spring 2012.

  “Breatharians” by Callan Wink. First published in The New Yorker, October 22, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Callan Wink. Reprinted by permission of The New Yorker.

  Foreword

  OCCASIONALLY SOMETHING HORRIFIC transpires—and in what seems like a minute, this something changes us. It changes us as sentient beings with souls and minds. It changes us as parents and siblings and children, as travelers and citizens and individuals. Certainly as artists and readers, certainly as writers.

  After 9/11, writers wondered how or even if it was possible to understand the events that occurred. How and what and why to write now? What to read? Little seemed relevant or urgent enough. Were we as Americans anywhere near as savvy or admired as we had thought? One of our toughest, bravest, proudest cities was revealed to be susceptible. Even baldly vulnerable.

  To me, the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, was similar to 9/11 in its ability to demolish a country’s posture, not to mention its values and even aesthetics. As the news broke that day, disbelief rippled throughout the country and the world. No, we thought. Many of us glanced at each other, wondering whether this or that person was thinking the same thing: This cannot be right. THIS cannot have happened. This, here. And then, as confirmations came of all that had occurred i
n that school, a collective shudder and the impulse to turn away, perhaps inward, to regain our breath. To hold our children and our parents for dear life. And later, the impulse to assign blame (to graft meaning onto the meaningless)—to blame gun makers, the country’s health-care system for abandoning its mentally ill, politicians, a culture that glamorizes violence, video games that do the same, and the media for shining its spotlight on mass killers.

  Again, the human capacity for violence has proven to be greater than we previously thought. Again, a dark cloud has settled over our country.

  This unthinkable event, the sixteenth mass shooting of 2012, occurred toward the end of my reading cycle, just in time for me to freeze up each time I read a story featuring groups of children in harm’s way or gun violence or, heaven forbid, a school shooting. Pity the writers who may have still been trying to comprehend the shooting at Columbine High School. This was not the time to publish a short story about such matters.

  A few months later, I write this with a still-jumpy heart. The reality and possibility of mass shootings have come to occupy my thoughts many times daily. When I walk my twin children into their kindergarten classrooms in their small elementary school. When I return to their school in order to drop off forgotten sneakers, when I stand beneath the camera that is now mounted beside the school entry in order to identify myself. When I go to any large, enclosed, crowded space. Malls, movie theaters—or not even large spaces. The subway, the train, any place where strangers find themselves in close proximity. There is a heavy stone in my chest during these moments that was not there before the shooting at Newtown.

  I am enormously lucky—I have never witnessed or known anyone who was killed in a mass shooting. I do not and have never lived anywhere near where such a thing took place. I can only imagine how different every inch of the world looks to those who did lose a loved one.

  In 1946, my predecessor, Martha Foley, wrote, “It is a literary truism that there must be a period of distillation before the real impact of some tremendous event, either historical or personal, can emerge in writing.” Now, due to the speed with which we receive our news and the graphic nature of its delivery, I think that the actual distillation time has shrunk, although I’m not certain that this yields writing as rich in perspective or depth of emotion. Before now, the strongest and most timeless stories about a transformative event had been written after a good amount of time elapsed. Now, writers’ frequent use of the present tense combined with our widespread exposure to up-to-the-minute news has led to a rise in stories and novels that trace the microscopic jigs and jags of grief itself. In other words, while we are grieving, we are now writing.

  We may be sacrificing perspective or depth, but this does not necessarily amount to lesser writing. If anything, there is a new sort of immediacy, a newfound intimacy and urgency in our fiction these days. Witness, in the following pages, Karl Taro Greenfeld’s story of one man’s clumsy grappling with being let go from his job. Or David Means or Steven Millhauser as they tunnel so deep inside their characters’ fears and hopes that at least this reader was rendered nearly breathless. For evidence of technology’s increasing impact, see Elizabeth Tallent’s magnificent “The Wilderness,” which scrolls before us as if on a computer screen.

  As I read in 2013, I will listen for a slightly faster heartbeat, one closer to our schools and children, one differently attuned to crowds and violence. And in years beyond, I hope to find a glimmer of meaning and the salve of perspective in some wise story about one of our saddest days.

  Elizabeth Strout was a wonderful reader, an author who knows well that the sound of one’s writing is just as important as and indivisible from the content. Some years I work closely with guest editors as they read and hone their list. Other years, they prefer to read and select privately. Elizabeth was the latter sort, and delivered to me a terrifically diverse, interesting, and impressive table of contents. There was a bit of back-and-forth, but very little was needed in the end. Here are twenty compellingly told, powerfully felt stories about urgent matters with profound consequences.

  The stories chosen for this anthology were originally published between January 2012 and January 2013. The qualifications for selection are (1) original publication in nationally distributed American or Canadian periodicals; (2) publication in English by writers who are American or Canadian, or who have made the United States their home; and (3) original publication as short stories (excerpts of novels are not knowingly considered). A list of magazines consulted for this volume appears at the back of the book. Editors who wish for their short fiction to be considered for next year’s edition should send their publication or hard copies of online publications to Heidi Pitlor, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 222 Berkeley Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02116.

  HEIDI PITLOR

  Introduction

  THERE WAS A TIME when a telephone was something that hung on the wall or sat on a table, and when it rang you had no idea who was calling. “Hello?” People had different ways of saying this, of course. Those expecting disaster (my grandmother) would say the word with quiet dread. Those who wanted to appear friendly (my mother) would say it with perkiness: “Hel-lo!” Or a self-conscious adolescent might mumble “Hullo?” It was a question, more than a greeting. Before answering machines and caller ID, that word asked, Who’s there? What are you calling about? What is it you have to tell me? Rarely was one more attuned to the sound of voice than in the moment before the answer. Whoever had telephoned had done so for a reason: to deliver bad news or good, to report something overheard in the grocery store, to spread gossip or stop it, or to express concerns about the world. One anticipated the tone of the voice as much as the words.

  A reader is in the position of saying hello. Tentatively, enthusiastically, or even with trepidation, the reader approaches a piece of writing with the unspoken question What do you have to say? And the writer answers, This. I have this to say, and I want you to listen to my voice, to the tone of my voice, because that will tell you what I have to say. In fact, in the first story of this collection, the narrator, an out-of-work actor, observes, “I should be clear about something: it is never the words, but how they are spoken that matters.”

  Quite naturally, we choose to listen to certain voices based on personal taste. And these days, as we glance at our ringing phone, we can make a decision: No, I don’t feel like talking to her right now, she goes on about herself and thinks every detail matters and who cares what her loser of a husband said last night. Turning away from a solipsistic, unedited voice. Or we think, Oh, it’s him, yay, I always want to listen to him. “Hello?” we say, with anticipation, because this guy knows when to spring the surprise, how to make us feel that what he says is confidential and important. His voice pulls us toward him. He lets us in.

  So if you wonder why I chose the stories I chose, I would say it had a great deal to do with voice. That sound—if it is working well—has authority, probably the most important dimension of voice. We really hope the writer knows what he or she is doing. And we really hope that this sense of authority will be sustained throughout. We look for this the same way we look for authoritative competence in any other trade. We don’t want to be lying on a dentist’s chair with a wide-open mouth and hear the dentist say, “Oh, hell.” We don’t want a plumber to gaze at a broken pipe that has flooded the floor and mutter, “Huh, I don’t know.” And we don’t want a writer whose voice wobbles or becomes false. I don’t think readers think about this analytically, but instead, they experience it as a feeling about the writer that grows stronger as they read: I want to be in your company, I want to keep going, I like the way you sound.

  This authoritative voice will differ from one writer to the next, which is how it should be; the writers are different people, and each has a singular way of putting words together, developed in a particular culture, place, and time. The authority that Alice Munro brings to the page has a very different sound than that of George Saunders, which is entirely distinct fro
m the sound of Junot Díaz.

  I remember sitting a number of years ago in a diner in a small town in Maine with my mother, my small daughter, and her father, the latter two raised near New York City. In the next booth two middle-aged local women, short-haired and wearing flannel shirts, were speaking in the flat unexpressive tones familiar to me; I had grown up in northern New England among such voices. One woman said to the other laconically, as if telling of a leaky faucet, “Yuh. Well, she killed her husband, didn’t she?” And the other woman responded, “Ay-yuh, she did. Shot herself a month later.” And they nodded matter-of-factly.

  What is notable to me in these voices is the sense of place and culture. What struck my child and her father as surprising—the utter lack of expression—was not surprising to me. Very big news was swapped in very few words. In terms of storytelling technique, much was left to the listener. Had the same story been told in a different part of the country by members of a more outwardly expressive culture, we might have heard all sorts of details exchanged in urgent tones. Through a change in voice, the same story would have been a different story.

  In this way, the sound of the story intuitively and naturally merges with what is being said. Listen, for example, to the breathless voice of the narrator in David Means’s “The Chair,” as his anxiety in watching over his young son unfolds. Or observe how Steven Millhauser’s “A Voice in the Night” is exactly that: the almost run-on language and razor-sharp memories that arise when a person lies alone in the hours of darkness—waiting. In “The Provincials,” Daniel Alarcón, writing from the point of view of an actor, suddenly switches from prose and presents the spoken words of characters in the form of a script. At that moment in the story the narrator feels as if he is in a scene from a play, and Alarcón writes it as such, which heightens the moment—literally—in a dramatic way.