The Best American Essays 2013
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Foreword
Introduction
Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel
Night
Sometimes a Romantic Notion
Highway of Lost Girls
Keeper of the Flame
Breeds of America
My Father’s Women
Confessions of an Ex-Mormon
“I’m Jumping Off the Bridge”
Pigeons
Triage
The Art of Being Born
What Happens in Hell
The Exhibit Will Be So Marked
The Girls in My Town
Some Notes on Attunement
His Last Game
When They Let Them Bleed
Field Notes on Hair
Letter from Majorca
Ghost Estates
Channel B
A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died
Epilogue: Deadkidistan
El Camino Doloroso
The Book of Knowledge
Contributors’ Notes
Notable Essays of 2012
About the Editor
Footnotes
Copyright © 2013 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Introduction © copyright 2013 by Cheryl Strayed
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Best American Series® and The Best American Essays® are registered trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not authorized to grant permission for further uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this book without the permission of their owners. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein. Address requests for permission to make copies of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt material to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
ISSN 0888-3742
ISBN 978-0-544-10388-7
eISBN 978-0-544-10574-4
v1.1013
“The Art of Being Born” by Marcia Aldrich. First published in Hotel Amerika, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2013 by Marcia Aldrich. Reprinted by permission of Marcia Aldrich.
“Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel” by Poe Ballantine. First published in The Sun, June 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Poe Ballantine. Reprinted by permission of Poe Ballantine.
“What Happens in Hell” by Charles Baxter. First published in Ploughshares, Fall 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Charles Baxter. Reprinted by permission of Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agents.
“Letter from Majorca” by J. D. Daniels. First published in The Paris Review, Summer 2012. Copyright © 2012 by J. D. Daniels. Reprinted by permission of J. D. Daniels.
“His Last Game” by Brian Doyle. First published in Notre Dame Magazine, Autumn 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Brian Doyle. Reprinted by permission of Brian Doyle.
“A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died” by Dagoberto Gilb. First published in ZYZZYVA, Fall 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Dagoberto Gilb. Reprinted by permission of Dagoberto Gilb. “Fun” by Wyn Cooper originally appeared in The Country of Here Below, Ahsahta Press, 1987. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“When They Let Them Bleed” by Tod Goldberg. First published in Hobart, Winter/Spring 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Tod Goldberg. Reprinted by permission of Tod Goldberg.
“The Book of Knowledge” by Steven Harvey. First published in River Teeth, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Steven Harvey. Reprinted by permission of Steven Harvey.
“Breeds of America” by William Melvin Kelley. First published in Harper’s Magazine, August 2012. Copyright © 2012 by William Melvin Kelley. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Triage” by Jon Kerstetter. First published in River Teeth, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2011 by Jon R. Kerstetter. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Confessions of an Ex-Mormon” by Walter Kirn. First published in The New Republic, August 2, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Walter Kirn. Reprinted by permission of Walter Kirn.
“Epilogue: Deadkidistan” by Michelle Mirsky. First published in McSweeney’s, November 8, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Michelle Mirsky. Reprinted by permission of Michelle Mirsky.
“The Exhibit Will Be So Marked” by Ander Monson. First published in Normal School, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2013 by Ander Monson. Reprinted by permission of Ander Monson.
“The Girls in My Town” by Angela Morales. First published in Southwest Review, 97/2. Copyright © 2012 by Angela Morales. Reprinted by permission of Southwest Review and Angela Morales.
“Night,” from Dear Life by Alice Munro, copyright © 2013 by Alice Munro. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission. First published in Granta, Summer 2012.
“Pigeons” by Eileen Pollack. First published in Prairie Schooner, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2012 by The University of Nebraska Press. Reprinted by permission of The University of Nebraska Press.
“I’m Jumping Off the Bridge” by Kevin Sampsell. First published on Salon.com, August 3, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Kevin Sampsell. Reprinted by permission of Salon.com.
“Sometimes a Romantic Notion” by Richard Schmitt. First published in The Gettysburg Review, Autumn 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Richard Schmitt. Reprinted by permission of Richard Schmitt.
“El Camino Doloroso” by David Searcy. First published in The Paris Review, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2012 by David Searcy. Reprinted by permission of Aragi, Inc.
“Some Notes on Attunement” by Zadie Smith. First published in The New Yorker, December 17, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Zadie Smith. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Channel B” by Megan Stielstra. First published in The Rumpus, November 9, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Megan Stielstra. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Ghost Estates” by John Jeremiah Sullivan. First published as “Where Hope and Human History Don’t Rhyme” The New York Times Magazine, February 12, 2012. Copyright © 2012 by John Jeremiah Sullivan. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
“Highway of Lost Girls” by Vanessa Veselka. First published as “The Truck Stop Killer” in GQ, November 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Vanessa Veselka. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Keeper of the Flame” by Matthew Vollmer. First published in New England Review, 33/1. Copyright © 2013 by Matthew Vollmer. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Field Notes on Hair” by Vicki Weiqi Yang. First published in South Loop Review, 14. Copyright © 2013 by Vicki Weiqi Yang. Reprinted by permission of Vicki Weiqi Yang.
“My Father’s Women” by Mako Yoshikawa. First published in The Missouri Review, Spring 2012. Copyright © 2012 by Mako Yoshikawa. Reprinted by permission of Mako Yoshikawa.
Foreword
WHEN I BEGAN STUDYING literature as a graduate student in the early 1960s, I approached the subject in ways so many of my generation did, as the study of poetry, fiction, and drama. My bible at the time was a critical volume published in the late 1940s by René Wellek and Austin Warren called Theory of Literature, which clearly privileged fic
tive works over nonfiction, though literary works then were so exclusively identified with poems, novels, and plays that the privileging barely went noticed. When in the mid-sixties I took a seminar on Ralph Waldo Emerson with the brilliant critic and quintessential Emersonian Richard Poirier, we concentrated on Emerson as a thinker and prose stylist, as the central figure of American literature, but I don’t recall a single bit of discussion that regarded Emerson as an essayist, as a writer wholly engaged with a particular literary genre.
Essays were a minor genre, at best, and at worst one of the many forms of subliterature. They didn’t reward critical study except in the growing discipline of freshman composition, where students were exposed to the work of George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, E. B. White, Loren Eiseley, Joan Didion, and many other essayists past and present, though in an academic setting that generally prioritized rhetoric over literature. As someone serving in the trenches of freshman composition, I also grew familiar with these writers, often through college essay anthologies designed to assist young instructors in teaching first-year students how to write effectively. My reading was thus divided between two opposing curricula—the main graduate school curriculum, which favored fiction, poetry, and drama, and the freshman writing curriculum, which permitted essays and literary nonfiction, such as that of Gay Talese, Gloria Steinem, Terry Southern, George Plimpton, Nora Ephron, and Norman Mailer, all of whose work I eagerly read and taught. It wasn’t exactly schizoid, but it was always clear which works fell into the realm of serious literature and which didn’t.
I will always recall one course that violated those literary boundaries. In 1965 I was fortunate to be admitted into a seminar taught by William Phillips, the prominent editor of The Partisan Review. We met once a week in the offices of that illustrious literary journal to read and discuss contemporary criticism—Lionel Trilling, Philip Rahv, Dwight Macdonald, Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy, Leslie Fiedler. Since a number of these writers and critics would visit periodically I also had the pleasure of meeting them at readings and receptions. Hanging out at the Partisan Review offices, sharing the excitement of current literary gossip, hearing a glamorous Susan Sontag read “Notes on Camp” upon its publication in the magazine, or having an impromptu lunch with Philip Rahv—these experiences put me in touch with essays in a way I had never been before. It made so much academic discourse appear dull, and it also made the reading I did for my freshman writing courses seem far more engaging and relevant than the reading required for the graduate school curriculum. It was exciting to move from PMLA (the publication of the Modern Language Association) to The Partisan Review, and I realized I was far more interested in the world of public intellectuals than in literary scholarship. I began to see essays as provocative, sexy, a way of being in the world that could be both satisfyingly aesthetic and socially active. For that Partisan Review seminar on contemporary criticism I wrote a paper on Norman Mailer as an essayist, focusing on his rough-and-tumble collection Advertisements for Myself.
Years later, through the 1970s and 1980s, I continued to immerse myself in essays, inspired by the connection I had formed with the genre while studying with Mr. Phillips (we were not to call him “Professor”) at The Partisan Review. For me, essays could be every bit as “literary” as poems, novels, and plays, and by the mid-eighties I began to think that they deserved an annual volume that showcased the year’s best. When I began gathering essays in 1985 for the first volume in the series, I discovered that one of the unanticipated pleasures of the project was being in touch with the editors of literary periodicals. I blithely assumed I knew what these would be but very quickly came across journals I had no idea existed, and that too was a large part of the enjoyment I took in compiling the collection.
In that first year, for example, a new magazine with the zany name ZYZZYVA (see Dagoberto Gilb, “A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died,” p. 254) was launched by Howard Junker in San Francisco. Taking its title from the last word in the dictionary (at least it is in my American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language), ZYZZYVA, now under the editorial direction of Laura Cogan, has remained one of the leading West Coast literary journals, consistently and attractively publishing many of the nation’s outstanding writers.
It’s easy to overlook the fact that this series features both writers and the periodicals that publish them. You may not notice at first glance, but this collection is almost completely dependent upon the existence of literary magazines. If you glance down the table of contents you’ll see, aside from prominent periodicals such as The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and Harper’s Magazine, some magazines you may never have heard of—Hotel Amerika, Hobart, River Teeth, The Normal School, South Loop Review. If you look at the list of notable essays in the back, you’ll see perhaps even more unfamiliar journals: n + 1, Ninth Letter, Gulf Coast, Lake Effect, Fifth Wednesday, Zone 3. Some periodicals, of course, like Ploughshares, The Paris Review, and Prairie Schooner, are preeminent among literary periodicals and are well known to writers who submit their work regularly and to editors and agents who are always scouting for new work and looking to discover new voices and emerging writers. But for the most part, I think it’s safe to say that the average American reader is unfamiliar with many of the literary magazines featured or listed in this collection.
The vitality of American literature has long depended on the almost heroic efforts of literary magazines, which manage to survive today despite budget reductions, rising costs, and an unstable publishing environment. It’s true that every year I see magazines fold—The Partisan Review, for example, unfortunately stopped publishing in 2003—but new magazines keep appearing. Some seem to rise out of the ashes of their predecessors. When the excellent Ohio Review came to an end in 1999, one of its associate editors, David Lazar, created Hotel Amerika (see Marcia Aldrich, “The Art of Being Born,” p. 132), which he took with him to Columbia College in Chicago when he moved there in 2006. Featuring a generous sampling of cutting-edge writing in all genres, traditional and hybrid, Hotel Amerika has maintained an eye-catching and creative literary identity for over a decade. It is always a pleasure to read.
Another impressive magazine coming out of Chicago’s Columbia College is South Loop Review (see Vicki Weiqi Yang’s “Field Notes on Hair,” p. 217). Published annually and edited by ReLynn Hansen, South Loop Review concentrates on creative nonfiction and art, describing itself as designed “for audiences who look for strong, compelling resonant voices that give insight into contemporary experience and cultural phenomena.” With an artistic focus, the editors “give greater emphasis to non-linear narratives and blended genres” and “welcome montage and illustrated essays, as well as narrative photography.” Readers interested in the creative process will appreciate the journal’s dedication to the craft of nonfiction and its interviews with some of the nation’s most innovative writers; a recent issue, for example, featured David Shields on the always challenging topic of truth and nonfiction.
Other relatively new magazines also focus exclusively on nonfiction. One of the most highly respected is River Teeth, a “Journal of Nonfiction Narrative” founded by Joe Mackall and Dan Lehman in 1999 on the campus of Ashland University in Ohio. Although the general reading public may not be familiar with the journal, it is well known to nonfiction writers for its exacting standards and wide-ranging topics (the two essays reprinted here—Steven Harvey, “The Book of Knowledge, p. 274, and Jon Kerstetter, “Triage,” p. 123—come from the same issue). River Teeth also sponsors a premier annual nonfiction writing conference.
Another recent addition to the literary magazine scene is The Normal School (see Ander Monson, “The Exhibit Will Be So Marked,” p. 153), which takes its name from the old term for a teachers college. Now in its sixth year of print publication, the magazine was founded by Sophie Beck, Steven Church, and Matt Roberts and is supported by CSU Fresno, where Steven Church (whose own work has appeared in The Best American Essays) teaches creative writ
ing. According to Sophie Beck, the magazine was originally conceived as a home for “homeless writing—things that were too long, too short, too experimental, or unclassifiable that could be nestled in with classically crafted pieces.” A large-size, typographically inviting magazine that publishes all genres, The Normal School is indispensable for anyone interested in discovering new directions in the contemporary essay.
Lately a number of literary journals have abandoned print for online formats. Yet Hobart (see Tod Goldberg, “When They Let Them Bleed,” p. 205) began life online in 2001 but then launched into print a few years later. Edited by Aaron Burch, Hobart (not affiliated with the New York State men’s college of that name), though published irregularly, still maintains an active online presence. Though it modestly calls itself “another literary journal,” Hobart is far from typical, especially in some of its theme issues, which, like the one on “Luck” published in 2012 to commemorate the magazine’s thirteenth issue, feature a captivating range of writing and some remarkably quirky items.
These are just a few of the literary journals I read regularly. Years ago, when I taught courses on magazine writing I’d begin by asking students which magazines they would submit work to. It should probably not have come as a surprise, but I was nevertheless surprised to see that nearly all of them said The New Yorker. I assume this response had less to do with their talents and ambition than with the fact that it was the only magazine of a literary nature they’d heard of. The New Yorker is without doubt a great magazine, one that publishes memorable work issue after issue, forty-seven issues a year. Yet it’s interesting to note that in this collection The New Yorker appears only once. This volume is indeed a tribute to the astonishing amount of great writing that is consistently published year after year in what we used to call the “little magazines.”