The Best American Short Stories 2020

Una mala antología.

I read this book as one of an American short stories reading circle members.We all are enjoying to learn how the present authors write about American lives.

I admit that so much of what happens in this collection is dependent on the tastes of the guest editor and mine being somewhat in synch but even taking that into account I must say that this years group of stories is particularly uninteresting and very poor. All but 2 of the stories here fell totally flat for me and just did not hold my interest at all. I get so very tired of the subject being crap relationships and a story peopled with neurotic self-absorbed whiny people just gets boring quickly. I like tremendous variety and I just don't see that with this years batch. Some of the writing styles are just simply talentless and the ones that aren't are just not compelling. I found myself while in the middle of almost every one of these stories looking ahead to see how many more pages were left before they would be over. Perhaps I am too much of a "classicist" being a huge fan of Henry James, Hawthorne, Poe, Faulkner, Alice Munro, Eudora Welty, Sommerset Maughm and Chekov to become interested in a story that just doesn't have any good characters, dialogue or compelling conflict. Perhaps the kind of story I admire isn't being written anymore (beginning, middle,end) but I am pretty sure that out of the 100 or so stories that were previewed by the editor here there must have been at least 4 or 5 that were outstanding. None of the stories here are what I would call "outstanding." I look forward to this collection every Hoilday and have read them for 30 or so years and some years are better than others but this year's was very disappointing and some of the ones selected were so poor that, quite frankly, I had to ask myself if the guest editor really was a writer herself. 2020 strikes again eh? Sorry, but I just don't get it.

I used to LOVE Best American Short Stories series and read them every year with the greatest of anticipation. I have 20+ of them. Now, I just find that I read one story after another with a sense of maybe I'll like the next one. I get to the end and I think that was disappointing. The stories seem to be selected more for the pleasure of other writers rather than readers. For me, a story that lingers in the mind after reading is the best one. I look for reading to bring insight and a bit of something I was unaware of before. This was not going to take me there.

The 20 stories were way too long. "Rubberdust," by Sarah Thankam Mathews was a good one about elementary school kids in a Hindu culture. It was six pages and restored some faith in short stories. Otherwise, authors today leave out a denouement that wraps things up with a good ending and not the reader going "Huh?" at the end. The stories seem to lack exactness thus leaving the reader to divine some sort of metaphorical significance when there is none. Some of these authors of this book are published because they have a PhD and a professorship somewhere--some rather prestigious. If you're a young struggling author and want have your work published, forget it unless you have a PhD because agents won't touch you. They are like used car salespersons in which they are after repeat sales by publish-or-perish professors who make their students buy their books at exorbitant prices.Two short stories of decades ago as examples of the genre's lost art are William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," and "To Esme' with Love and Squalor," by J.D. Salinger. They are not prolix nor do they offend the reader by leaving the story in limbo.