The Best American Short Stories 1993

I recently came upon a copy of The Best American Short Stories 1993 edited by Louise Erdrich. One interesting aspect of the collection is that Erdich didn't arrange the stories by alphabetical order like usual. She starts the collection off with John Updike's "Playing With Dynamite"-noting that he usually comes last in these collections. I am a fan of Updike but haven't read anything by him in years and this story made little impression on me. Unlike the second story, Mary Gaitskill's "The Girl on the Plane," which feels more relevant today than in 1993. It is the story of a man who while talking with a woman who is a stranger admits to having raped a woman he loved as a young man-it is evocative of the messy sexuality of people while young and under the influence of alcohol in the age of the "Me, too!" movement. The author notes in the back gives the author opportunities to comment on the stories (another feature I don't remember seeing in this collection before). There was something of negative reaction in which readers thought she was endorsing gang rape, to which she states: "Why would an adult look to me or any writer to tell him or her what to feel?" It was interesting to see that Alice Munro found inspiration from her lengthy short story "A Real Life" from her reading about Albanian Virgins in the early 20th century who were treated like males as long as they didn't have sex. I was intrigued by Harlan Ellison's short story, "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore," because some of my college friends were fans of Ellison, whose writing is usually characterized as Science Fiction a genre I haven't been found of since adolescence. And it it felt very post modern in the narrative style that was playful and telling of Eilison's attitudes against things such as racism or fascism. I was also impressed with Thom Jones' story, "I Want To Live!", about a older woman dying of cancer that was based on Jones' experience with his mother-in-law. He even manages to bring Schopenhauer into the story-well-done. I also quite enjoyed Tony Earley's "Charlotte" a story about love, pro wrestling, and the Charlotte Hornets-very postmodern. Kim Edwards's story "Gold" was set in Malaysia, where she had lived briefly. And Diane Johnson's story "Great Barrier Reef" was based on an actual trip she took and gets at how traveling can be transformative: "Of course it wasn't the prize--only a little key chain, after all--that had cured me, but the process of the voyage, and the mysterious power of distant places to dissolve the problems the traveler has brought along." I was pleasantly surprised how funny and poignant Lorrie Moore's "Terrific Mother" was-one of my favorites in the collection. The fictional narrative of the author's father, Mary Gordon, was the subject of another standout, "The Important Houses." All in all this collection was somewhat uneven despite having a number of excellent stories-I did skip more than a few.