The Year That was: The Best American Annuals

Fifty Best American Short Stories 1915 1965 edited by Martha Foley

Since 1915 Houghton Mifflin (et al) has maintained the tradition of publishing a yearly anthology of short fiction (ably assembled, for many years, by Martha Foley) entitled not surprisingly Best American Short Stories. Leaving aside the unfortunate American overuse of superlatives, this annual collection is high quality rivaled only by the yearly O Henry Prize stories compendium. Each year a guest editor is presented with about a 100 stories, drawn from a very broad and diverse mix of publications and culled from a much larger group by the current series editor.

As is the practice of Best American annuals, novelist Jennifer Eagan guest edited 2014’s volume. Among the contributors are, CHARLES BAXTER, ANN BEATTIE, T.C. BOYLE, PETER CAMERON, JOSHUA FERRIS, NELL FREUDENBERGER, DAVID GATES, LAUREN GROFF, BENJAMIN NUGENT,JOYCE CAROL OATES, KAREN RUSSELL and Laura Van Den Berg. Worthy reading.

The Best American Short Stories 2014 edited by Jennifer Eagan

 

Sometime in the 1980’s Best American Essays  (and Best American Mystery Stories )was added to the soon to be burgeoning Best American brand under the direction of Robert Atwan. This year’s essays anthology is guest-edited by John Jeremiah Sullivan, he of the celebrated essay collection Pulphead.  Even if you are not familiar with this  all-star cast of writers such as DAVE EGGERS, EMILY FOX GORDON, MARY GORDON, VIVIAN GORNICK, LESLIE JAMISON, ARIEL LEVY, YIYUN LI, BARRY LOPEZ, CHRIS OFFUTT, ZADIE SMITH, ELIZABETH TALLENT,WELLS TOWER, PAUL WEST and JAMES WOOD, be assured that the topics chosen range far and wide with refreshingly original explications.

The Best American Essays 2014 edited by John Jeremiah Sullivan

Baltimore’s talented crime story novelist Laura Lippman hosts this year’s Best American Mystery Stories 2014 and consciously avoids drawing from the usual suspects thus including surprising names for the genre— MEGAN ABBOTT, DANIEL ALARCÓN, RUSSELL BANKS ,JAMES LEE BURKE ,PATRICIA ENGEL, ERNEST FINNEY, ROXANE GAY, CHARLAINE HARRIS,JOSEPH HELLER, ANNIE PROULX and LAURA VAN DEN BERG.

Best American Mystery Stories edited by Laura Lippman

Sometime around the turn of the century, someone over at Houghton Mifflin with a some marketing savvy added all manner of categories to the Best American brand which currently includes—Travel Writing, Science and Nature Writing, American Comics, American Infographics and Non-Required Reading.

Not to draw to fine a point but I am still troubled by the insistence on literary journalists and other wise thoughtful folks can not shed themselves of mania for superlatives. The Best American Stories don’t have to carry that name for me to be interested reading them.

Da Bestest

The —-Short Stories of 1917

If you can,as I must, set aside the meaningless superlative ‘best, then you will welcome this season of anthologies that affix “BEST” to their annual offerings.Houghton Mifflin (now additionally Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) has been in the best annual anthology game for almost 100 years, first publishing a story annual in 1915. It was the solitary title under that rubric until the 1980’s when an annual essay collection was added, under the guidance of Robert Atwan. I can’t remember when they went crazy but as you can see below they have certainly expanded the product line (at one time there was also a recipe annual as well as one for religious writing Personally, I still wonder why there is no novella anthology).

The —-American Short Stories 2013, edited by Elizabeth Strout

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, known as HMH, since there is a contemporary mandate (or inclination?) to abbreviate everything (and then some)in recent years has added a guest editor in addition to a series editor (Heidi Pitlor)who reads approximately 400-500 entries to its annuals. Despite the seemingly fragile status of short fiction (in the eyes of publishers) HMH’s American Short Story Annual still reigns supreme. For the 2013 annual the inimitable Elizabeth Strout oversees the final 20 odd selections that make the cut from series editor Heidi Pitlor’s incredibly long list. You will find stories by a stellar cast of literary masters such as

DANIEL ALARCON
CHARLES BAXTER
JUNOT DIAZ
BRET ANTHONY JOHNSTON
STEVEN MILLHAUSER
LORRIE MOORE
ALICE MUNRO
ANTONYA NELSON
GEORGE SAUNDERS
JIM SHEPARD
ELIZABETH TALLENT
JOAN WICKERSHAM

As well as some up and comers

The B–t American Essays 2013 by Robert Atwan and Cheryl Strayed

The B–t American Science and Nature Writing 2013 by Siddhartha Mukherjee and Tim Folger

The B–t American Nonrequired Reading 2013 Paperback by Dave Eggers

The B–t American Comics 2013 by Jeff Smith, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden

The B–t American Mystery Stories 2013 by Lisa Scottoline and Otto Penzler

The B–t American Sports Writing 2013 by Glenn Stout and J. R. Moehringer

The B–t American Infographics 2013 by Gareth Cook and David Byrne (Introduction)

The B–t American Travel Writing 2013 by Jason Wilson and Elizabeth Gilbert

The B–t American Magazine Writing Edited by Sid Holt

Apparently one publishing house has not cornered the market on superlatively entitled anthologies. There is B–t American Magazine Writing 2013 Edited by Sid Holt for The American Society of Magazine Editors (Columbia University Press)which is a useful and hefty (500 plusd pages)collection of reportage and essay that includes Pamela Colloff, Dexter Filkins, Chris Jones, Charles C. Mann and Roger Angell and much more.

B–t European Fiction 2014
edited by Alexandr Hemon

A few years ago (2010?) Dalkey Archive had the brilliant idea to spotlight European short fiction collected under the direction of the well-regarded Alexandr Hemon. For some reason that escapes me B–t European Fiction 2014 Preface by Drago Jancar (DAlkey Archive) is already available. With a plethora of mostly (of course) unfamiliar names (which is the point. You can find the line up here

I leave it to you to figure out why the early champion of literary annuals disregarded poetry but thankfully one did thus we have The B–t American Poetry 2013by David Lehman (Scribner). This year’s lineup features John Ashbery, Louise Gluck, James Tate, and Richard Wilbur, Sherman Alexie, Nin Andrews, Anna Maria Hong, Timothy Donnelly, Mary Ruefle, and Major Jackson.

From Black Sox to Three-Peats by EDITED BY RON RAPOPORT

Being a once and eternal Chicagoan and a sports zombie (how else to explain my hatred for football though I still watch the games?), I naturally gravitated to this special compendium,From Black Sox to Three-Peats: A Century of Chicago’s B–t Sportswriting from the “Tribune,” “Sun-Times,” and Other Newspapers edited by Ron Rapoport(University of Chicago Press). I especially liked the section entitled “Any Team Can have a Bad Century.” You can find the rest of the contents here.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013 edited by Laura Furman

No respectable assemblage of annuals can be, well uh, respectable with out noting two more yearly anthologies.The O Henry Prize which originated in 1919 included a publication which exists to this day The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013: edited by Laura Furman (Anchor) and juried by Lauren Groff Edith Pearlman, Jim Shepard includes short fiction by Donald Antrim, Andrea Barrett, Ann Beattie, Deborah Eisenberg, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Kelly Link, Alice Munro, and Lily Tuck and a dozen other pieces.

The Pushcart Prize XXXVII: B–t of the Small Presses (2013 Edition) edited by Bill Henderson

The Pushcart Prize was initiated in 1976 to recognize poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot published the wonderful small journals that populate the literary landscape The Pushcart Prize XXXVII: B–t of the Small Presses (2013 Edition)edited Bill Henderson (Pushcart) .

Currently reading The Orenda by Joseph Boyden (Knopf)