The Pushcart Book of Short Stories

Ok, so I didn't read the whole book. Of the 43 stories, I read 30. I was looking for something in particular in the stories and some I knew within a page or two were not it. Still, 30 of 43. That's enough to know what's here. What's here is a lot of really memorable stories - the kind that when you finish, tempt you just to turn back to their title page and read it again. What's here is a large number of really top-notch talent - Raymond Carver, Mona Simpson, Joyce Carol Oates, John Irving - the people you talk about when you talk about modern literature. It's encouraging to know they were published once upon a time in small presses. Success wasn't handed to them on a platter. I get so tired of anthologies with agendas. Throughout school, we read stories that were important, but few of them were very good. These days, seems the agenda is to cover as many minority groups as possible - "alternative voices." That's fine, but again, that means we're essentially choosing stories based on something other than their inherent quality. This anthology feels like it's just good stories - nothing's there for politic's sake, and nothing's holding is customary place because it's an "important" author or story. It should be a lesson to the overly-PC that an anthology put together based solely on the merit of the stories happens to include many, many stories by women and minorities. Some of my favorites stories were Andre Dubus' "Fat Girl, Charles Baxter's "Harmony of the World," David Jauss' "Glossolalia" (though I have no idea what that means), Liza Weiland's "Columbus School for Girls," "Edward P. Jones' "Marie," Mona Simpson's "Lawns," and Steven Millhauser's "Paradise Park." So many good stories, really, truly good, satisfying stories, it's hard to narrow it down to a few. Ones I wasn't so fond of: "Camo, Dope & Videotape," "As Kingfishers Catch Fire," "Graveyard Day", and "Hiding". And then there are the 13 I never didn't read. Maybe later.