The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Best New American Voices 2000 by Tobias WolffD. Quentin Miller
Tobias Wolff, ed. Best New American Voices 2000. Harvest/Harcourt, 2000. 434 pp. Paper: $14.00.
Readers of excellent but somewhat predictable and homogenous fiction anthologies like the Best American Short Stories series will be excited that there is a new kid on the block. This inaugural volume of a yearly series collects short stories by new writers rather than by established masters of the form. Contributors come from workshops and creative writing programs across the country, not from the pages of the New Yorker. Volume editor Tobias Wolff has selected twenty fine stories that vary greatly in terms of tone, subject matter, even length (with one selection, “The Hatbox,” by Jennifer Vanderbes, pushing the boundaries toward the length of a novella). These stories are by no means uniform and don’t fit together neatly like Lego blocks. The question most readers will ask is whether the collection also varies in terms of quality. Of course it does—what anthology doesn’t?—but the distance between the best and the worst of these stories is slight, and the overall impression the collection conveys is not that these emerging writers have a long way to go, but rather that there are some very exciting and promising new voices coming up over the horizon. In terms of energy, passion, artistry, and intellect, this collection is a winner, and it should appeal to readers generally interested in the short-story form, and particularly to aspiring writers of short fiction who want to find out what’s really current. Where else could one find stories about a rivalry between a punk rock drummer and a heartless record promoter, about a soon-to-be married playboy cyclist who follows an adolescent girl into her parents’ bakery and nearly falls in love with her, and about inmates facing imminent death in the AIDS ward of a prison? What is noteworthy is that these writers explore this fresh material with such accomplishment. It is a daring collection that is well worth our attention. [D. Quentin Miller]