Fiction forecast: mostly cloudy with a good chance of breakdowns. If Best New American Voices 2003 is a trustworthy indicator of the fiction to come, don’t forget your umbrella. This year’s 15 “most innovative and original writers” are a world-weary bunch fixated on troubled characters and their dark demises. Maybe it’s appropriate or something, given that today is Halloween.
The anthology opens with “Good,” a story about a young woman named Claire whose mother is dying of cancer. Claire meets Bill, whose wife has been “doing the cancer thing for six years,” and — to make a short story shorter — they have an affair. Bill’s wife dies, and he is overwhelmed with grief and guilt, so Claire locks him in the Family Room of the hospital to … comfort him?
“This is completely wrong,” Bill says sadly. “Stop me then,” Claire hisses.
Two paragraphs later, Claire is back in her mother’s hospital room, listening to the dying (and deluded) woman whisper her last words to Claire: “It’s how you are. The way I taught you to be. Good.”
Joyce Carol Oates, guest editor of this year’s anthology, plays the writing-workshop-facilitator by putting a positive spin on the book’s morbid themes. “I was struck by the high percentage of stories in which extreme or grotesque imagery figured,” Oates writes in the introduction to Best New American Voices 2003. “This leads me to conclude that, though this is an age of literary realism, it’s also an age that perceives its possibilities without, one might say, an excess of youthful optimism.”
Without an excess of youthful optimism? If we’re going to be realistic about this, let’s admit that almost every story is seriously pessimistic. “Under the Influence” tells the sad tale of Gary and Maggie – a divorced couple forced back together when their son kills a man. Gary, who still hopes the marriage will work, offers nothing but selfless kindness to Maggie, who shuts him out again and again. Finally, Gary snaps. He steals Maggie’s bag, runs back to his apartment and locks his door. “She had made me, after more than twenty years, a little more like her, a bit tougher, and even when her quiet, ragged breathing and moaning and muffled sobs could be heard coming from behind the door, I could not, for the life of me, raise my hand to the knob to let her in.”
The most promising writers of 2003 fill their dismal stories with a most unpromising cast of characters. “Circuits” is a summer beach romance told in the desperately whiney voice of a woman whose boyfriend would rather play tug-of-rope than have sex with her. “April” traces a day in the life of an increasingly unstable psychiatric patient, and “The Year Draws in the Day” is about a volunteer at an AIDS Center who tests positive for HIV.
Form definitely follows function in Best New American Voices 2003, which showcases writing styles that are as darkly realistic as the themes and characters.
Oates writes, “I might have wished for more formal experimentation and writerly playfulness,” but to no avail. It’s hard to find anything light or clever on this year’s short story horizon.
Amid all the gloom, there are a few flashes of brilliance in Best New American Voices 2003 “At Celio,” by Susan Austin, is an insightful story told by a woman who begins, “My husband has not been sleeping well.” The story moves seamlessly between the humor of the present (a visit from the acupuncturist) and the deep metaphorical significance of family history (the damming of Celio Falls).
“A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies” is also beautifully written and undeniably touching. Gentle first-person narrative probes the intense marriage of two surgeons and the heart-wrenching intricacies of their pasts. Striking imagery, subtle symbolism, and refined cultural details fill John Murray’s story with the intense light this dark anthology desperately needed.
Best New American Voices 2003 is a tumultuous read, but wait out the storm of dark themes, dismal characters, and stiff writing. When the sunlight breaks through, it is absolutely riveting.
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