IDEAL FICTION, Part I: Three of Flatmancrooked’s editors compile their ideal fiction anthologies

“And just as the iPod has killed the album, so the Kindle might, in time, spur a revival of the short story. If you can buy a single song for a dollar, why wouldn’t you spend that much on a handy, compact package of character, incident and linguistic invention? Why wouldn’t you collect dozens, or hundreds, into a personal anthology, a playlist of humor, pathos, mystery and surprise?”
-A.O. Scott, “Brevity’s Pull”

I’m not at liberty to tell you why some of our staff has recently had reason to browse www.eHarlequin.com just yet, (and there is a business reason, I swear), but we happened to come across something rather fascinating—something that’s happening in the thriving world of Erotic Fiction that ought to be happening everywhere else, too. They’re called “Spice Briefs.” While it sounds like something that would be rather uncomfortable to wear (and I’ve decided that they chose it over “Spice Shorts” in order to intensify the pun, as “Spice Briefs” are a potentially racier garment than the shorts version, despite “shorts” being a more widely used term for short fiction), the term refers to electronic short stories that are available to readers for a nominal price. In short, a cheap quickie. For $2.99 you get some professionally written porn.

A.O. Scott, in his Times article on the short story, brings up a similar idea, if only in theory, because for whatever reason, the infrastructure hasn’t been set in place. While you can buy a collection of short stories in an electronic version for your Kindle or iPhone, you can’t buy a single story the way you can buy a single song off of an album. Now, I’m not well-versed in the technological side of electronic publishing, but it seems like it would be an extremely simple thing to set up. The reader buys each story for a dollar or two and can have that piece of literature to read, whether it’s on the computer or some other device. Beyond that, in the same way that you can compile a playlist of songs, a reader can essentially become the editor of his or her own ideal short story anthology. And for those still hesitant about electronic reading devices, if this database of short fiction is applied to print-on-demand technology, one could essentially create a physical anthology of short stories to put on your shelf, right next to all of your first editions.

In the spirit of this impending technology (for surely it impends), some of Flatmancrooked’s editors have compiled their own ideal short story anthologies. Below, we hope you’ll leave us your own compilations, as it’s our understanding that there’s little else that readers and writers and editors like better than extolling their own good taste. In the months to come, we’ll continue to post new lists from various authors, editors, and our readers.

Deena Drewis, Senior Editor:

Love and Squalor: Ten Stories to Make You Laugh or Uncomfortable

It wasn’t until I looked at these ten stories and tried to form some sort of order that I realized they tend to be a near split of the blatantly comedic and very serious, like Saunders and Carver, respectively. I suppose you could argue that all the stories contain some of both elements, if not explicitly (like Paley), but what they share absolutely is that with all of them, I can remember where I was when I first read them. I don’t mean this in a particularly sentimental way—I was, for example, doing nothing more extraordinary than sitting in my room when I first read “Why Don’t You Dance?”—but that while some stories fail to impress their narrative in your memory and you have to skim the story to remember it, others embed themselves inextricably. The following ten stories fall into the latter category.

1. “Why I Live at the P.O.” by Eudora Welty
2. “Why Don’t You Dance?” by Raymond Carver
3. “Je Ne Parle Pas Français” by Katherine Mansfield
4. “Hell/Heaven” by Jhumpa Lahiri
5. “Sea Oak” by George Saunders
6. “The Fat Girl” by Andre Dubus
7. “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” by J.D. Salinger
8. “How to be an Other Woman” by Lorrie Moore
9. “The Used-Boy Raisers” by Grace Paley
10. “So Much Water, So Close to Home” by Raymond Carver

Joshua Neely, Editor in Charge of Prose & Poetry:

Josh’s Quintessential Short Story Anthology: Minimalism, Magical Realism, Maximalism, and Maximalist Magical Realism

Many of these stories are so great that I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read them. If I could, I’d include the entire collection that each story came from, especially Schulz’s The Street of Crocodiles, Hemingway’s In Our Time and Helprin’s The Pacific and Other Stories. Sure, Annie Dillard generally writes non-fiction, but she writes so well and “An Expedition to the Pole” is such an outstanding and lyrical piece of non-fiction that it blurs the line between essay and story beautifully. Helprin’s story is the best short story about baseball you’ll ever read. In fact, all of these stories are amazing. You should stop reading this now and go find them and read them again and again and again.

1. “The Swimmer” by John Cheever
2. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
3. “Big Two Hearted River I & II” by Ernest Hemingway
4. “Perfection” by Mark Helprin
5. “Things That Fall from the Sky” by Kevin Brockmeier
6. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel García Márquez
7. “A & P” by John Updike
8. “An Expedition to the Pole” by Annie Dillard
9. “So Much Water, So Close to Home” by Raymond Carver
10. “The Comet” by Bruno Schulz

Steve Owen, Editor in Charge of Outreach:

Essential Stories for an Experimental Fiction Anthology

Innovation is the essence of literature; repetition of an established style is like wearing a shabby coat.

Experimental is a vague term, but stories that explode traditional narrative assumptions interest me-why, for example, should a character change? Is that necessarily realistic? The behavior of schizophrenics and sociopaths shows that obsession is usually more compelling than epiphany.

My dream anthology would showcase stories that upset traditional notions of literary or philosophical realism. For example, Brian Evenson’s “White Square” posits language as an opaque tool that leads to a dehumanizing solipsism. The oneiric logic of Franz Kafka’s “A Country Doctor” carries the reader off on a nightmarishly exciting carriage ride. The surreal imagery of Rikki Ducornet’s “Opium” induces a papal hallucination disturbing enough to convey the abominable power of theocracy. And in “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Jorge Luis Borges famously prefigures the postmodern thesis that language creates, rather than reflects, reality.

1. “Two Brothers” by Brian Evenson
2. “White Square” by Brian Evenson
3. “A Country Doctor” by Franz Kafka
4. “Opium” by Rikki Ducornet
5. “You Drive” by Christine Schutt
6. “Bestiary” by Julio Cortázar
7. “Stone Animals” by Kelly Link
8. “Innocent Objects” by Diane Schoemperlin
9. “Pagan Night” by Kate Braverman
10. “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges

By Deena Drewis