Great American Short Stories (Anthology. 1986. Watermill. ISBN 0-8167-0798-7)
One of my three older sons left this book behind on the family bookshelf. It was likely an assigned text in an English class at Hermantown High School that either Matt, or Dylan, or Chris slogged through. Not that my boys aren’t readers. All three of them read for recreation in their own way. But I doubt any of them would have picked this book up and read it but for scholastic compulsion and consequence. This very small (105 pages) collection of short fiction somehow found its way into our upstairs bathroom, which is where, over the past several months, I’ve perused these iconic tales from five American master storytellers. There are some very familiar classics in this collection (like “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce,”To Build a Fire” by Jack London, and “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry). There are two other stories that I wasn’t familiar with, “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane, and “A Village Singer” by Mary Wilkins Freeman, both of which are also American very well done.
At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, short fiction was abundant and accessible to every reader in America. Many writers wrote a short story a week, sold their tales to magazines, and made a living feeding the literary hunger of mainstream America. Sadly, contemporary magazines that feature good, concise short fiction as their contribution to American letters are now the equivalent of the California Condor: nearly extinct and very hard to find. Oh, there are university-sponsored and not-for-profit niche’ publications still providing literary fiction in small doses to readers. But the old days of Look, Atlantic, Ladies Home Journal, and scores of other monthlies featuring short fiction as the centerpieces of their offerings to the American public are long in our past. Reading this thin volume takes a reader back to the era before radio, television, and the internet, back to a time when words on paper were the means of communication. My favorite story in the book? London’s “To Build a Fire”. As I type this, the mercury hangs below zero outside my writing studio in NE Minnesota once again. That fact alone is enough to create a connection between reader and writer in a tale where London profiles a neophyte visitor to the boreal lands near the Arctic Circle who, along with his dog, sets out from the safety of one cabin to meet up with his mates holed up in another remote camp. There are only two characters in the tale: the human and his dog and London does a masterful job of exploring what each of his players experiences during their respective journeys.
A fine way to spend a few moments of time with some very memorable folks.
4 stars out of 5.
Peace.
Mark
