The Best American Short Stories of the Eighties
I inherited this book from my mom-in-law. I doubt she read it herself because the pages look as if they had never been turned. But are the stories inside this book really America's best short stories in the eighties? If so, why doesn't my local library have a copy of this book? Just how do libraries decide what books to put in their collection? I'm curious because my local library seems to have a lot of very useless and boring books on the shelves. Just who gets to decide what books our local libraries carry? Does anyone know?
Anyway, I'm going to keep this book on my bookshelf for now because I think any books that my local library doesn't have are keepers.
Stories included in this book:
I just finished reading Robert Stone’s “Helping” in this book. I find the pace of the story boring and slow. It’s not a page turner for me. Thank god it’s a short story so I was able to finish reading it. I can’t relate to Elliot or his wife. I can’t understand how two employed professionals with no kid can be stuck in such a painful marriage. The style that the story was written made it difficult for me to focus on the story or the characters. Its exhaustive descriptions of the backdrops and landscape was too distracting to me. In the end, I wasn’t even sure whether Elliot actually shot his neighbor, Professor Anderson by accident. The ending described Professor Anderson to be lying motionless on the snow, yet Elliot was also wondering if his wife was disappointed to not see blood. So, did Elliot shoot his neighbor or did he not? Either way, I don’t care because I’m not emotionally invested in any of the characters in this story.
ReplyDeleteI don’t know how Donald Barthelme's "The Emerald" got published. I don’t see the appeal. I have no idea what this story is about. I can’t even identify who the characters in the story are and whose line is whose. This seems to be a very fragmented story that talks about totally random and irrelevant things and people. I don’t understand what this story is about. I don’t appreciate the writing style and the dialogue. The story sounds like the random rants of an insane person that don’t mean anything, and that don’t have any point in anything. I couldn’t finish it even though it’s a short story. I had never abandoned a story once I started reading. This story is the very first one that I had to just give up.
ReplyDelete