My kids, twelve-year-old twins, both love books. At least they do for now. I say this not with immodesty but awe. They also love YouTube, as well as my phone (we are holding out as long as possible before getting them their own phones), certain movies that are streaming, and TV shows and video games. But they prefer their fiction and other long-form reading between covers and on pages made of paper. The fact that they choose to read anything long-form that is not required for school gives me hope. According to a Pew Research poll, in 2000, 48 percent of Americans did not use the internet; in 2018, only 11 percent were nonusers. This is my thirteenth foreword to The Best American Short Stories, and I wonder if there has ever been a more change-filled thirteen years in the way that we spend our day-to-day lives. Our phones can alert us to upcoming traffic, accidents, and even roadkill. Amazon Alexa can order your refrigerator to turn on its icemaker. I don’t need to recount all of the methods by which we now stay in touch, fall in love, champion causes, shame others. And read.
Early on in his reading for this book, guest editor Anthony Doerr described to me his challenge in reorienting to each new short story sent to him—120 distinct voices, plots, sets of characters—and frankly, I was relieved to hear that I was not alone. I confess that in the past few years, I have found my own attention span fractured. We are now, many of us, moving so quickly from task to task, from texting to life to work to social media, that it has grown a little difficult to engage in something that requires our minds to slow down for an extended period of time.
In my house, we do impose screen limits and constantly urge our children to be more in the world, to have physical experiences, but also to get comfortable with being bored. It’s OK to just sit still and be blank, I tell my kids. Look out the window sometimes. Think, imagine, let your minds wander—and see where your mind lands. Of course, moments of stillness and blankness have become rarer for most of us. I too am not all that comfortable with boredom anymore. And so I find my children’s engagement with books these days almost miraculous. I will not lie: given the choice between a book and a computer, they will usually choose a computer. But I have seen them fall into certain books—and it does look like they have in fact landed somewhere they want to be. During a quiet afternoon or before bed, I have watched them turn pages, oblivious to me and the dog and everything else, and I am reminded of what a story can do. A good narrative can slow a mind that’s moving too quickly. A great story is its own kind of meditation, and at the risk of sounding even more woo-woo, its own kind of out-of-body experience. A ceding of one’s heartbeat and focus to another place and time. What a gift this is, especially now.
I truly enjoyed working with Anthony Doerr, who, as he describes in the following pages, arrived at this gig with his analytical mind prepared and ready. When he began, he pointed out to me the plot holes in certain stories, the inconsistencies and implausibilities. Here’s a secret: every year, in some way, I find myself telling the guest editor that there are not twenty perfect stories. There is not even one perfect story. There is, to my knowledge, no such thing to all people. What one person sees as implausible, another sees as imaginative. You have to keep your eyes on something other than the authors’ missteps to do this work, although of course, too many missteps can sink any story. But in general, you learn to keep your gaze on something bigger and broader, the horizon of a story, say, rather than the potholes. The horizon—the place where voice, mood, plot, characterization, language, and perspective coalesce and expand—the horizon is where you’ll find, as Anthony calls it in his introduction, the “magic.”
Lately I am drawn to bold stories, stories that without any equivocation go somewhere. Sentences that set something simple and clear on the table. To be bold in one’s writing right now seems to me an act of tremendous courage. The legendary Ursula K. Le Guin never shied away from fearless thinking, and her astonishing story of a woman nursing a wounded mine inspector does not disappoint. Ella Martinsen Gorham’s story, “Protozoa,” rings with poetic assurance: “With crazy eyes she pretended she was about to jump off the edge of an overlook, like the ocean was a trampoline she could bounce on.” In the first sentence of his searing story, Manuel Muñoz does not waste words: “Her immediate concern was money.”
The stories in this volume are bold, some are transgressive, and all are relevant to this moment in time. Some eschew conventions of plot. Anthony and I discussed the diffuseness of this year’s stories, how wonderfully unfocused and digressive so many were. I have a kneejerk tendency to play armchair psychologist when it comes to trends in short fiction, and I do wonder if because there are so many gripping plots coursing through our country—just read the news any day of the week—story writers are filling their pages with a different kind of thinking now, one more meditative or sprawling as respite from the deluge of conflicts in the real world. I have zero data to back this up, of course, simply my own gut feeling and a very regular diet of short stories. But in this time of so much bad news about our climate, intolerance, corruption, and violence, I’m grateful for these stories and the way they slowed my mind, transported me, and reminded me of the power of language.
This year we say goodbye to two magazines that have been beacons for writers and readers over the years. Farewell, Glimmer Train and Tin House, and thank you for the enormous amount of beauty that you brought to readers over the years. I also want to thank April Eberhardt, Jenny Xu, and Nicole Angeloro for their invaluable help with this book.
The stories chosen for this anthology were originally published between January 2018 and January 2019. The qualifications for selection are (1) original publication in nationally distributed American or Canadian periodicals; (2) publication in English by writers who have made the United States or Canada their home; (3) original publication as short stories (excerpts of novels are not considered). A list of magazines consulted for this volume appears at the back of the book. Editors who wish their short fiction to be considered for next year’s edition should send their publications or hard copies of online publications to Heidi Pitlor, c/o The Best American Short Stories, 125 High Street, Boston, MA 02110, or files to thebestamericanshortstories@gmail.com as attachments.
Heidi Pitlor