Introduction
The excellent
becomes the permanent.
—
Aristotle
When we began the
work of assembling short stories for this book, one of our
criteria — unspoken, but there nonetheless
— was that a story's narrative interest would be one
of the deciding factors in our selections. We also felt that
we were
not out to be democratic in our selections, or even representative.
There was only so much space in the anthology after all, and
a limit to the number of stories we could include. Decisions
had to be made that were not always easy. But aside from this,
however, we were simply not interested in putting before the
reader further examples of what some have called "postmodern" or "innovative" fiction,
and others have hailed as "the new fiction" — self-reflexive,
fabulist, magical realist, as well as all mutations, offshoots,
and fringe movements thereof. We were interested in stories
that had not only a strong narrative drive, with characters
we could
respond to as human beings, but stories where the effects of
language, situation, and insight were intense and total —
short stories which on occasion had the ambition of enlarging
our view
of ourselves and the world.
A tall order, indeed. But isn't it true that with any great,
or even really good short story (or any other singular work of
literary art), just something like this does often happen? We
think of the thirty-six short stories included herein are ample
evidence that it is possible for stories to produce such salutary
effects; and in our selections we aimed for work that aspired
to nothing less — stories of consequence that in some important
way bear witness to our own lives. In any event, in light of
our sensibilities and according to our criteria, time and again
we found ourselves moved and exhilarated as we read and selected
the work that follows.
It's our
view, and one not lightly held, certainly not defensively,
that the best short stories of the past thirty years can stand
alongside the best of those of earlier generations — the several
generations of writers represented, say, in Short
Story Masterpieces,
that excellent book edited by Robert
Penn Warren and Albert
Erskine.
In its
way, this present collection may be seen as a companion volume
to that earlier book. Most important in this regard, the bias of
this collection, as in the other, is toward the lifelike— that
is to say, toward realistically fashioned stories that may even
in some cases approximate the outlines of our own lives. Or, if
not our own, at least the lives of fellow human beings — grown-up
men and women engaged in the ordinary but sometimes remarkable
business of living and, like ourselves, in full awareness of their
mortality.
In the last thirty years there was, on the part of many
writers, a radical turning away from the concerns and
techniques of realism — a turning away from the "manners
and morals" that Lionel Trilling correctly saw as
the best subject matter for fiction. In place of realism,
a number of writers — writers of considerable skill
and stature, some of them — substituted the surreal
and the fantastic. A smaller and less-talented group
mixed the weird and far-out with a relentless and sometimes
disquieting nihilism. Now it seems that the wheel has
rolled forward again and fiction that approximates life
— replete with recognizable people, and motive,
and plot, and drama — fiction of occurrence and
consequence (the two are inseparable), has reasserted
itself with a reading
public that has grown tired of the fragmentary, or bizarre.
Fiction that asks that the reader give up too much —
in some cases deny what reason, common sense, the emotions,
and a sense of right and wrong tell him — is seemingly
in retreat these days.
No one should be surprised then at the resurgence, not
to say new dominance, of realistic fiction, that most
ancient of storytelling modes. This book might be seen
as a celebration of, and a tribute to, the lasting power
of narrative short fiction. We further feel we have gathered
together some of the best stories recently produced by
this oldest of literary traditions, work that we like
to think has as good a chance as any, and better than
most, of withstanding "the tooth of time."
A notable
difference between Short Story Masterpieces and this
book is that fully a third of the thirty-six stories in the
earlier collection are by writers from England and Ireland.
When we were establishing some ground rules to determine how
we planned to go about selecting stories for this anthology,
we decided early on to include works by American writers only.
There was, we felt, plenty of significant work on this side
of the Atlantic from which to choose. We also decided
not to include stories by writers who were already included
in Short Story Masterpieces. Thus, Peter Taylor, Eudora
Welty,
and John
Cheever, some of whose best work was published after 1954
(the year Short Story Masterpieces appeared) were reluctantly
left out.
In one respect, at least, it would seem that life was simpler
in the literary world of the early 1950s: Warren and Erskine
didn't have to talk about "postmodernism" or any of
the other "isms" — including "realism." They
didn't find it necessary to explain the reasons that lay behind
their choices, or articulate their methodology. They simply discussed
good and great stories — masterpieces, by their definition —
and masters of form. The word masterpiece meant something
in those days and signaled a bench mark of excellence that most
readers (and writers) could agree on. No one had to debate the
concept itself, or the wisdom of applying such a term to select
examples of serious imaginative writing. The editors found two
dozen stories by American writers, spanning fifty years or more
of American life and literary endeavor, and they put these stories
alongside a dozen stories by their English and Irish counterparts
of roughly the same period. They had their book. We limited ourselves
to American writers only, as has been noted, and our selections
cover thirty-three years — 1953 to 1986, to be exact — surely
the most climactic, and traumatic, period in American literary
history. Traumatic, in part, because it has been a time during
which the currency of narrative fiction has fluctuated wildly
and been variously assailed from several quarters. Now is as
good a time as any, perhaps, to try to reestablish the term masterpiece as it applies to singular stories with a narrative durability,
within a discernible narrative tradition.
As we considered the merits
of each story, we asked ourselves at how deep a level of feeling
and insight the writer was operating. How compelling, and coherent,
was the writer's sincerity (Tolstoy's word, and one of his
criteria for excellence) toward his material? Great fiction
— good fiction — is, as any serious reader knows, intellectually
and emotionally significant. And the best fiction ought to
have, for want of a better word, heft to it. (The Romans used
the word gravitas when talking about work of substance.)
But whatever one wants to call it (it doesn't even need naming),
everyone recognizes it when it declares itself. When a reader
finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have
to pause for a minute and collect himself. At this moment,
if the writer has succeeded, there ought to be a unity of feeling
and understanding. Or, if not a unity, at least a sense
that the disparities of a crucial situation have been made
available in a new light, and we can go from there. The best
fiction, the kind of fiction we're talking about, should bring
about this kind of response. It should make such an impression
that the work, as Hemingway suggested,
becomes part of the reader's experience. Or else, and we're
serious, why should people be asked to read it? Further —
why write it? In great fiction (and this is true, and
we mustn't fool ourselves that it's otherwise), there is always
the "shock of recognition" as the human significance
of the work is revealed and made manifest. When, in Joyce
's words,
the soul of the story, its "whatness leaps to us from the
vestment of its appearance."
In his "Introduction
to the Works of Guy de Maupassant," Tolstoy
wrote that
talent is "the capacity to direct intense concentrated attention
on the subject ... a gift of seeing what others have not seen." We
think the writers included in these pages have done this, have
directed "intense concentration" on their subject, seeing
clearly and forcefully what others have not seen. On the other
hand, considering some of these stories and their insistence on
depicting the "familiar," we think something else is
just as often at work — another definition of "talent," perhaps.
We'd like to suggest that talent, even genius, is also the gift
of seeing what everyone else has seen, but seeing it more clearly,
from all sides. Art in either case.
The writers
in this book have talent, and they have it in abundance. But
they have something else as well: They can all tell a good
story, and good stories, as everyone knows, have always been
in demand. In the words of Sean
O'Faolain, a contributor
to the earlier book, the stories that follow have "a bright
destination." We hope readers will be affected by more than
a few of these and will perhaps find occasion to laugh, shudder,
marvel — in short, be moved, and maybe even a little haunted by
some of the lives represented here.
— Raymond
Carver and Tom
Jenks
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