Monthly Archives: November 2009

Alyson Hagy, "Border"

A boy steals a dog and goes hitchhiking.

(from Ghosts of Wyoming)

There’s a precise (if hard to verbalize) kind of mood on every page, in every sentence. It’s a feeling of arcane wildness. The dim highways and open country, the hitchhiking, the coin-flip kindness/meanness of strangers met on the road — it feels like a rusted over, pre-cell phone version of America a passing reader like myself can only hope still exists.

Steve De Jarnatt, "Rubiaux Rising"

A drug addicted, Gulf War vet/amputee is trapped in an attic during Hurricane Katrina.

(from Best American Short Stories 2009)

He sees gray light squeezing through rippage in the curling tarpaper lining the inside of this well-built roof. Wood is bare, creosoted here and there, but no paint.

Yeah, that summary is a handful, but this is actually not a heavy-handed or melodramatic story. It’s kinda simple and brilliant and weird. Wait, what?! Is this the same Steve De Jarnatt who wrote Strange Brew? And the guy who wrote Strange Brew directed Cherry 2000? Turns out yes. Dude just got his MFA from Antioch. This is his first published short story. And, I believe, the only link between the Best American series and Bob and Doug McKenzie.

Alyson Hagy, "Border"

A boy steals a dog and goes hitchhiking.

(from Ghosts of Wyoming)

There’s a precise (if hard to verbalize) kind of mood on every page, in every sentence. It’s a feeling of arcane wildness. The dim highways and open country, the hitchhiking, the coin-flip kindness/meanness of strangers met on the road — it feels like a rusted over, pre-cell phone version of America a passing reader like myself may hope still exists. Good story, too, with swift bits of tension and horror.

"Yurt," Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

A teacher comes back from her sabbatical in Yemen.

(Best American Short Stories 2009)

It was the first week of May, and she was holding court in the teachers’ lounge, her hair nearly down to her waist and her big belly protruding over her lap. Above the belly, Ms. Duffy laughed and swayed and gestured freely with her hands, as if to say, “What—this old thing?”

Ms. Hempel couldn’t take her eyes off it. It looked as tough as a gourd.

This is my first short story in a long while, after my own Infinite Jest-related sabbatical. Loved the book. I didn’t go for this story however. It wasn’t bad (obviously — the BASS stamp, if nothing else, guarantees great writing on a sentence-by-sentence basis) just a little dull. I guess you have to be in the mood to read a story about savoring moments and what have you.

Read it yourself, here.