The Best American Short Stories of the Century

Interviews & Essays

On Thursday, April 1st, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Katrina Kenison to discuss THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY.

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Moderator: Welcome, Katrina Kenison! Thank you for taking the time to join us online tonight to chat about THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY. How are you doing this evening?

Katrina Kenison: Oh, I'm fine. It's a pleasure to be here!

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Marina from NYC: There must have been tremendous pressure to choose the right guest editor for this volume. How was John Updike selected to be the editor? Who else were you considering, if he were to say no?

Katrina Kenison: Well, the fact is, we didn't consider anybody else. He was the obvious choice, because he was the only living writer whose stories had appeared in Best American Short Stories in every consecutive decade since the '50s. No one else could make that claim, although Joyce Carol Oates comes close. Also, I looked at Updike as being a critic as much as he is a short story writer. And we very much wanted that generosity of spirit toward other writers to flavor this collection. So, fortunately, he said yes!

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John from New Berlin, NY: Were there any stories that were overlooked in past volumes of Best American Short Stories that you would have wished to include? Perhaps stories that didn't get their due until later years?

Katrina Kenison: Well, the most obvious story to me was Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," which I was sure I would find in the 1958 volume. And not only was it not there, but it wasn't even listed as a notable story of the year. Others would be "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony." There were no stories by Mary McCarthy, no stories by John O'Hara. So, those were the most notable omissions.

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Pauline from Minnesota: With the turning of the century, there have been a lot of "the best" lists going around. What were your criteria for determining which stories were the best of the best?

Katrina Kenison: Well, obviously the first criterion [was] that the stories had to have appeared in a volume of Best American Short Stories. Beyond that, I looked for stories that both represented the time in which they were written, and had withstood the test of time.

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Celia from Florida: Do you think the stories included in the 1990s chapter would have made it into a Best American volume published in the teens? Or vice versa?

Katrina Kenison: I think that a reader in 1915 would have looked at the stories of the 1990s as something akin to science fiction. There would have been so few points of common reference that a reader would have been baffled. Well, you know, I think one of the best stories in this collection, and a story that is quite modern in tone and subject, is a story from 1917 called "A Jury of Her Peers." It's about a woman who murders her abusive husband and is protected by two women in her community. And it is as fresh and as powerful now as it must have been then. I also think that Sherwood Anderson really defined the modern short story and would be completely at home were he alive and writing today.

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Kate from Houston, TX: You must have had an amazing time reading all of the past volumes. How did you go about it? How many had you read before the project began?

Katrina Kenison: I had read, obviously, all of the '90s volumes, most of the '80s volumes. Before I proposed the project to Houghton Mifflin, I picked up a couple of the old volumes just to get a sense for myself of how the stories would hold up, and whether or not it would even make sense to do a project like this, and I found those old volumes to be extremely compelling. So, once I actually began to put together this volume and to do the reading, I started at the very beginning. And fortunately, I had the 1915 volume from a used bookstore, and I read it chronologically, decade by decade. And I took notes as I went in a great big black notebook, because I read everywhere and I wanted to make sure that none of the stories that I read slipped through the cracks.

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Mark from Weston, CT: Did you and John Updike disagree on any of the selections? Anything you would have liked to see included that didn't make it?

Katrina Kenison: Our tastes were remarkably similar. I think there were one or two stories that he chose that perhaps I wouldn't have. Stories that he remembered reading years ago and was happy to put back into print. In particular, the J. F. Powers story "Death of a Favorite," which was a particular favorite of his. But for the most part, we really were in agreement, although the final cutting and winnowing was painful for us both, and I still feel a bit guilty that Andre Dubus is not in this collection, and in particular his story "A Father's Tale," which would have been here if we had had more room.

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James from San Francisco, CA: Of course, this edition came out before the 1999 Best American could come out. Have you seen any new stories this year that you think could possibly have made it into the century volume?

Katrina Kenison: Absolutely! And in fact, when we do the paperback a year from now, we will include a story from the 1999 volume of Best American Short Stories. You heard it here first at barnesandnoble.com!

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Haley from Kansas: Have any younger people (teens to early 20s) made the cut into your book?

Katrina Kenison: Definitely early 20s. I don't know exactly how old Maxine Swann is, but I believe she's in her early 20s. She's in the 1998 volume. I think Carson McCullers was 19 or 20 when she first appeared in Best American Short Stories. Certainly it's a level playing field, and age is not a factor.

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Greg from Ann Arbor, MI: Based on what some editors have chosen for these volumes over the years, how do you think the short story and our perception of it has evolved in this century?

Katrina Kenison: I would say that the biggest change has been the role that the short story plays in our lives. In 1915, when this series began, many people in this country did not even read a daily newspaper, let alone have access to the kind of information that we all take for granted today. So, the short story really did bring them news of the world, and of how other people lived. We don't need stories to do that for us anymore, and so in the course of this century, there has been a movement toward the inner life, and today we look to short stories to tell us truths about the human spirit rather than details of our daily lives.

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Niki from Sudbury, MA: Do you think past editions of Best American Short Stories reflect the editors of that particular year? For example, will the stories that Garrison Keillor picks have a different general feel as compared to when, say, Tobias Wolff was the editor? Thanks!

Katrina Kenison: Absolutely. And I think that this is one reason that the series remains so fresh and so interesting year after year, because it never has a chance to settle into any kind of an editorial rut. Each guest editor brings his or her own taste and predilections to this process. This year's editor is Amy Tan, and although we certainly didn't plan it this way, the volume that she has assembled has a wonderfully multicultural flavor, and in fact for the very first time, Best American Short Stories will feature a writer who was born in Nepal but was eligible for inclusion because he now lives in Hawaii. As the annual editor, I am grateful that this series is never simply a reflection of my own taste.

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pac87@aol.com: Were there any particular years that were especially strong and more difficult than other years to pick a story?

Katrina Kenison: I fell in love with the '40s, and I just wallowed in those volumes and probably submitted more stories from the '40s to John Updike than I should have, but it seemed to both of us that the short story really came alive in the '40s, and there was just a wealth of good fiction to choose from. I think it's also difficult to choose from the most recent volumes, because we didn't have the benefit of time and hindsight to tell us which stories would really hold up.

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Geraldine from Boca Raton, FL: What surprised you most while preparing THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY?

Katrina Kenison: Well, I guess the biggest surprise to me was how much I enjoyed this process. It was a daunting amount of work, and a great responsibility to take on. And yet, I never thought it was a burden. In fact, I felt honored to be the editor who happened to be alive at the end of the century to assemble this volume. About the stories themselves, I would say I was most surprised to see how powerful some of the writers we take for granted really are. Most of us read Hemingway and Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty and others in high school or college English classes, and we tend to think that we don't need to go back to revisit their work again. When in fact, anyone who really cares about American fiction should welcome the opportunity to read these authors again as adults, rather than as students.

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E. V. from Lighthouse Point, FL: I read that Ernest Hemingway was first published in Best American -- even though his story was previously unpublished. Could you tell us more about this? Do you think this decision launched Hemingway's career? What do you know about what governed the editor's decision to include him?

Katrina Kenison: That's a great question, and a great story behind Best American Short Stories. Edward O'Brien lived in England for most of his life, and edited Best American Short Stories from England, and he was also kind of a patron saint to writers. He entertained writers in his home for months at a time, and often supported writers from one book to the next, and in Hemingway's case, O'Brien was on a holiday in Switzerland, and someone introduced him to this discouraged young man who told O'Brien that he was ready to give up writing because no one would publish him, and that all of his manuscripts had been lost or destroyed -- that's the famous 'suitcase full of manuscripts' story. O'Brien asked him if he had anything to show him, and the young man said that he had two short stories that no one wanted. O'Brien offered to read them, and broke his own rule that stories had to have been published elsewhere to be eligible for Best American Short Stories. He gave Hemingway his very first publication in 1923, and even dedicated that year's volume to him. And thus was launched one of the great literary careers of our century!

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Moderator: If the Y2K bug wreaks its havoc, what three books would you like to read by the light of your power generator?

Katrina Kenison: Well, I think I would keep THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY by my side, because all of the stories bear rereading and offer rewards to those who do so. I would also pick Anne Morrow Lindbergh's GIFT FROM THE SEA, which has been a personal bible to me in my own life as a writer, wife, and mother. And I would pick ANNA KARENINA, because it's the one book that I've been meaning to read for 25 years and still haven't! Probably SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS, because I could read them for the rest of my life and continue to find beauty and inspiration in them.

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obscure_rhetoric@yahoo.com from Richmount: What would you say are good qualities that the short stories in this volume have in common?

Katrina Kenison: Well, they are all stories that demand to be finished. I made a vow at the outset of this project that I would read every story -- about 2,000 in all -- from start to finish. Even the ones that I thought didn't stand a chance. But the stories that survived the process of reading and selection and rejection are the ones that just wouldn't let go. And so we couldn't let go of them either. They compelled me as a reader. They compelled John Updike as a reader. And we hope that they will compel those who pick up this volume.

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William from Binghamton, NY: What were the most difficult stories for you to omit?

Katrina Kenison: I've already mentioned Andre Dubus's "A Father's Tale." It was very hard to let go of a story called "Helping" by Robert Stone. And I'm sorry that Grace Paley and Tillie Olsen aren't here, because they've been so important to me. But in the end, it was a question of space, and the final hard decisions belonged to John Updike, who suffered mightily while he made them.

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Hannah M. from Louisville, KY: Did you find that most of the stories came from similar sources, like The New Yorker? Why do you suppose this is? Also, what was the most surprising source for something included?

Katrina Kenison: The New Yorker gets the prize for the most short stories published in Best American Short Stories over the years. They have 208 in all, beginning in 1930. The Atlantic is the runner-up, and the reason is that both of these magazines have been staunch defenders of fiction for most of this century. Their standards have always been high. They've published without interruption. And many of our Best American writers appeared regularly in their pages. I would say that over the years, there have been little magazines that come and go, and many of the early ones are long since lost to history. So they were all surprising sources for me -- magazines like The Bellman, Every Week, and The Frontier. A couple of these magazines vanished without a trace, and yet published some of the best fiction of their time. So they are intriguing mysteries to me.

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Oren from Milton, MA: What do you think of the controversial Modern Library Top 100 list? Although you are operating under a different set of rules, since the Best American annuals have been published for most of the century, do you expect the same sort of conflict over this book?

Katrina Kenison: The existence of that Modern Library list and the controversy that erupted over it made me thankful that our own list could not be so arbitrary. We were able to cast our net in one pool only, and so we began with a list of candidates that was preordained. Reviewers, knowing that, have been reluctant to carp too much about what's not here, and have enthusiastically embraced the stories themselves -- both the literary classics that are must-haves in a volume like this one, and the undiscovered gems that might otherwise have disappeared forever.

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Naomi from Bennington, VT: Which, of all the ones included, is your favorite story?

Katrina Kenison: I guess I have two, and they are very different. One is "A Jury of Her Peers," by Susan Glaspell, which is a story mentioned earlier in our discussion. It was a revelation to me that women nearly 100 years ago were courageously facing some of the same issues that we confront today. And I love that story because it is one of those discoveries of an unknown writer who is no longer a part of the canon. On the other hand, I would have to pick John Cheever's story "The Country Husband" as a favorite. I had read it before, and yet when I read it again, I felt that I had rediscovered it, and I was reminded all over again that John Cheever is our greatest master of the form. If there is a masterpiece in this book, this might be it.

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Moderator: Thank you, Katrina Kenison! Best of luck with THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY. Do you have any parting thoughts for the online audience?

Katrina Kenison: I would just say: Don't read this book because you feel you should, but read it for the sheer joy of encountering writers both old and new who will touch your life in ways that will surprise, delight, or haunt you.

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