Characters: n/a
Writing: n/a
Plot: n/a
Pacing: n/a
Poignancy: n/a
My standard critical breakdown obviously doesn't apply to short story anthologies, so, instead, I'm going to sum up my feelings on this collection here and now, before I delve into specifics. I suppose I'm judging this book with rather high standards — which I think is fair, considering its title and potential. Yet even on more lenient grounds, TBASS-2009 is wildly uneven: the first half (a full 150 pages) contains only two or three stories of mild interest, and while the second half is a vast improvement, even many of the better pieces are closer to competent than profound.
This review will likely end up seeming quite harsh, but I don't want to suggest that any of the writers featured here aren't good at what they do — they are. The writing is extremely competent. The problem is that it's rarely anything more than that. Often competency is enough to make for a good collection, but here, among the "Best," it simply feels underwhelming and lazy. Too many of these stories seem "safe", something that writing should never be, especially in a form as dangerous as the short story. Short stories have many uses, their own unique devices and advantages, and there are many out there as detailed and revelatory as a good novel — which is why it's all the more distressing to wade through dozens of mundane shorts that are about exactly what you'd expect them to be about and fail to make any statement beyond their predictable ambiguities. I'm beginning to wonder if modern authors think that the less you say in a story, the more profound it will somehow be. Don't get me wrong, subtlety is a necessity in exceptional writing — it's just that subtlety, on its own, doesn't make writing exceptional. Perhaps new writers have observed too many classics in which this difficult trick has been successfully achieved, and then decided to take it one step further, removing even metaphor and emotion. Characters in a bland story do little, learn little, and often fail to accomplish what little was possible for them to accomplish in the first place — just like life! But life is not automatically a story, and suddenly your understated vignette is so very, very far from achieving the all-important mark of memorability.
Fortunately, as the collection continues, the stories become more entertaining by degrees. As mentioned already, my ultimate problem is that too few of them leave a mark — not the harshest or most damning of critiques, of course, but something I can't ignore. There are too many safely open-ended conclusions, too many passive characters, timid narrative glances at poignancy. It's unfortunate, as many of these pieces are extremely solid on their own, and it's a shame to see them somewhat buried. It should also be mentioned that none of the stories in this collection are remotely daring in regard to content, which isn't even an issue — a story about a woman contemplating divorce while on vacation is gripping when well told. That's the whole point — an author's job is to make their presentation engaging and meaningful, and the dullest daily drama should thus become fascinating and fresh, just as the most outlandish action-packed spectacle can be tedious in the clumsy hands of a poor storyteller.
Interestingly, many of the best stories aren't set in contemporary America at all. Two notable pieces take place in modern China; one perfectly-pitched tale in an unnamed WWII-stricken city ("The Briefcase," one of my favorites in the collection); a sublime period piece by the author of Brokeback Mountain once again demonstrates the versatility of familiar settings and archetypes, and its counterpoint, the charmingly odd "The Peripatetic Coffin," shows us the men behind the first ever successful submarine attack. A few stories in the collection do achieve poignancy, revealing the fine line between a well-told dull character piece and a well-told engaging character piece — such as the masterfully crafted "Magic Words," or "Sagittarius," a meditation on parenthood that should not be confused for fantasy. One of the best, however, is also the most ambitious. "Modulation" attempts to examine the role of music in contemporary society from a variety of disjointed angles, culminating in a daring twist. There are other satisfying stories that I haven't mentioned by name, but only a few authors that I look forward to reading again in the future. It's rare to find an anthology where all the stories are great, of course, but equally strange to find one where all the best are hidden in the back.
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