Ben MarcusThe Anchor Book of New American Short Stories

This is not so much a review of Marcus' remarkable collection as a musing on how difficult it is to finish a collection of short stories when you become enthralled by individual writers and veer off target to consume them.Thus far I only read half of this collection, the reason being some of the authors I already knew well (DFW, A.M.Homes, Mary Gaitskill) and the other being, having read some of the new names here, I went hunting, resulting in a tsunami of new books.This has meant time lost in recent months with George Saunders (both Pastoralia and Civilwarland in Bad Decline), Wells Tower (Everything Ravaged Everything Burned), Brian Evenson (Last Days) and Matthew Derby (Super Flat Times).(The diverse connections also led to reading David Ohle's The Age of Sinatra and The Pisstown Chaos and finally getting to Donald Barthelme).I had already consumed Ben Marcus' all too small output with enormous relish. The Age of Wire and String, Notable American Women and The Father Costume have all shot to my top 50 books - as a stylist he is incomparable and his is an imagination fertilized by the richest dung, the most fecund darkness. (As a creator of strange worlds, he is up there with that other maestro of Surrealism, Steve Erickson - Arc d'X, Days Between Stations etc. or the sadly missed J.G. Ballard.) Thus I would read anything he recommends. (Yes, I trust every word from Ben Marcus's rotten, filthy heart [apologies to Michael Marcus]). His introduction to this collection is worth the price of admission alone.I tend more towards the surreal than the real, which can taint ones approach enormously. Reading George Saunders and Wells Tower I was utterly seduced by their language, but these are writers of what might often be broadly termed `reality'. They bare their enormous hearts openly on the page, often with heartbreaking honesty. They are both writers of the highest order, but they are also weighted with a sense of reality - beautifully rendered, an marvelous flights of fantasy, but without the madness of a Ben Marcus or a Mathew Derby.It is telling that the two authors - Marcus and Derby - studied together. Super Flat Times was published in 2003 while Notable American Women appeared in 2002 and both books have a fascination, nay, obsession with language as a visceral force. Like Marcus' first book, The Age of Wire and String, Derby's book is ostensibly a collection of short stories, but in a strange way both can be read as novels about decidedly odd worlds.Intriguingly, cultural commentator Neal Pollack describes Super Flat Times as a "bold step forward in science fiction." It's a strange term to use for Derby's book. There is science here, but it's a very weird version; there are machines that process meat (the only edible food source left) and clouds are treated with behavioral chemicals. [...]But Derby's book is decidedly post-apocalyptic. Thus it could slot into the bookshelf alongside Marcus' The Father Costume, J.G. Ballard's Hello America, Denis Johnson's Fiskadoro, Samuel R. Delaney's Dhalgren, Jonathan Lethem's Amnesia Moon, Steve Erickson's Our Ecstatic Days, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crate, Philip K. Dick's Dr Bloodmoney, Cormac McCarthy's The Road and the truly, truly weird Extinction Journals by Jeremy Robert Johnson. These are all books where the world has been irreparably changed and the survivors must find new ways to make do. This is Dystopian fiction rather than Science fiction and both Marcus and Derby have found new poetry with which to describe it.Genre also becomes slippery picking up Brian Evenson's Last Days. Ostensibly this is a crime thriller, but that is just the beginning. It is equally an exploration into cult mentality when the dismembered detective protagonist, Kline, must infiltrate a bizarre `church' which takes literally the New Testament notion that you should cut off the hand that offends you... and much more if need be.This is dark, dark noir, profoundly paranoid and bursting with Holy Wrath. The only other `crime' writer I have come across that comes close is Jack O'Connell (who really should have been in the Anchor anthology but who, for some reason, keeps slipping through the cracks). O'Connell's world, in such books as Word Made Flesh, carries a similar fascination with warped religiosity, but Evenson, with a background in the Mormon Church, takes notions of feverish, obsessive belief into even darker realms.Ben Marcus, in editing the Anchor Anthology, has supplied us with a guidebook into a new world. To be sure we can see hints of many precursors: Pynchon, Dick, Barthelme, DeLillo, Ballard. But there is a freshness to this grouping that more than proves that the future of American literature is in more than capable hands.

This collection was a masterpiece! I LOVED reading the stories in here. I was required to get this for a Fiction Writing class and the stories were just so funny, entertaining, moving - they varied so much! My favorites were definitely Sea Oak and The PaperHanger. But there are so many good ones. I love the poems from Short Talks, I love the development of the characters in The Caretaker and When Mr. Prizada Came to Dine, The Father's Blessing was terrifying, so was Two Brothers - but so interesting at the same time. This collection is gold, I loved it. Also, the paperback copy I bought was in great condition.

This is the best anthology of contemporary fiction. It presents stories that are the best kind of stories: stories with strong ideas executed well. These are not the idea-free duds of the Best New American Voices series, nor the snoozefest "technical perfections" of the Best American general selections. Instead, there's one fantastic story right after another. Mercifully, the few misses in here are short enough to forgive, and there's otherwise no real failures (some pieces are impenetrable, but still fun), and there are many whopping successes, care of George Saunders, Wells Tower, Rick Bass, Padgett Powell, Mary Caponegro--scads of others. It's through and through a stunning and enjoyable--let me repeat, enjoyable, a word too often forgotten in contemporary fiction--collection of short stories.

The writers are fine, often emerging artists rather than established writers. For a book like this, I expected Gary Lutz (he's in there) or Donald Barthelme, Pychon or their like (they're absent). But the emphasis is on 'new' writers, so we're treated to newbies' view of what the genre-starters have done.But these are style samplers, especially for known writers like Wallace, Lutz and Holmes; they deliver. Or maybe re-deliver, as their work has been released in many editions. Good price, and getting better daily, it seems. It's a sampler; so sample.

I am in a short story class, and we haven't enjoyed this collection...too bizarre, depressing, and weird.

I love this anthology. Ben Marcus has wonderful taste and has selected many atypical stories not in other similar anthologies but also some of the best!The Caretaker by Anthony Doerr is the best of the bunch here.The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender is excellentSea Oak by George Saunders ... wonderful!The others are great. There is really no bad stories in the book!

I was very satisfied with the order process and the product. Thank you!

Excellent collection. Bought for a post-grad writing course, and read cover-to-cover.