The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3

I'm a bit disappointed in this issue of Best Creative Nonfiction. Although it has 25 essays, it's only 235 pages long, is Norton cutting costs by reducing page count? It looks wispy on the shelf next to last years whale-like Vol.2 and whispers forebodings about the series future. Reinforcing it's dark mood, there are only a handful of essays that stand out as being good enough to mark as favorites (detailed below). Part of the problem, I believe, is the selection committee which appears to be dominated by academic women. Almost every essay falls into two camps: the minority identity politics essay (handicap, women, black, gay, etc..) or the dysfunctional family history essay (characterized by a woman retelling a story about their grandfather, mother, uncle, etc..). So we have "good for you" politics mixed with "feel good" sentiment. I think Gutkind should try for a more varied selection process or editorial staff. One suggestion is each issue have a Guest Editor that makes the selection from a sub-set chosen by the permanent editors, similar to the "Best American" series. My four favorite essays were by Emily Rapp in "Okahandja Lessons" about a handicap woman who travels to Africa and learns handicapped people are looked on differently there than in America. In "The Face of Seung-Hui Cho", Wesley Yang writes probably the strongest essay of the book, about the 2007 shootings at Virgina Tech and how it feels to be a young Asian man in America. It has shades of Oscar Wao. Alice Dreger in "Lavish Dwarf Entertainment" gives a funny and enlightening romp through the world of dwarf entertainers. In the most dramatic piece, Gregory Orr in "Return to Hayneville" recounts his experience of being kidnapped and almost killed in Alabama during the 1960s as a Civil Rights protester. This is a great piece because it's a reminder that many young white people died in the South during that period.

Reading The Best Creative Nonfiction is like reading several magazine feature stories. It carries all the pleasure of this—it is interesting, relaxing despite the often tense and sometimes upsetting subject matter, and varied. As a person who enjoys reading stories like these, "narrative nonfiction," but who doesn't often sit down and fall into a magazine the way I do into a full-length book, this was a nice chance to get in that kind of reading. Of course, it also carries with it the downsides of that type of reading. Some of the subjects just won't end up appealing to you; neither will some of the essayists. Sometimes there is a little too much navel-gazing, though other writers manage to direct their musings more satisfyingly outward. But there were only a couple contributions I found particularly weak, and there were some, including the opening one on jailhouse food, that were pretty great. The anthology as a whole feels a bit like a chance to read snatches out of a couple dozen different memoirs, without spending enough time with any of the storytellers to get suffocated by them. I've been taken all across the country, across the decades, across the lines of class, with people who have been there and have something to say about it and a good portion of it was worth hearing.