Recently read.

I'm a third of the way through The Best American Short Stories 2009. I have had a love/hate relationship with this anthology since I began following the series in 2005. For every exquisite slice of original craft, you get the latest hollow iteration of the series' pet themes. You can guarantee that every year The Best American Short Stories will contain: a Jewish grandfather and grandson (the grandson grows up in New York or Chicago, does something vaguely creative professionally, and learns a lesson about his heritage from the foreign born older man he never understood), lower-class black girls (who discover the grim reality of their sexuality, most likely in the Bronx), upper-middle class white women (who hate their suburban existences), and the Third World (where good things can happen).

Being about these topics doesn't make a story bad, of course, it's just that the minds behind the Best American series often find subject matter reason enough to feature a piece. There have been good and bad stories about all of these character types, it's just that the editors often don't bother to make a distinction. As such, The Best American Short Stories occasionally feels predictable and stale - that is - until you stumble upon one of the rare treasures that manages to squeeze itself between the regulars. So far, that honor goes to Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum's "Yurt," a wonderful little offering that initially appears as innocent as a puff pastry, but tastes as rich as dark chocolate cake.

I've been on a serious short story binge lately, as evidenced by my whirlwind reading of Maile Meloy's Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It over a recent working weekend. Like Unaccustomed Earth, this book deserves more space than I'm going to give it, but only because it's so much better than anything I could possibly say. Meloy pulls her characters in opposing directions, forcing them to occupy that awkward space in the middle of the venn diagram. Some authors (Zadie Smith) can't help but leave their finger-prints all over a story; they have something real, and necessary, and urgent to say (and bless them for it). Meloy exists on the opposite end of the spectrum, the Raymond Carver end, where the writer removes him or her self from the narrative and simply lets their people breathe (and fuck, and fight etc.). If a Zadie Smith novel is a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, a Maile Meloy short story collection is a cool glass of water you drink in the middle of the night.