Book Review : A Smorgasbord of the Best Mainstream Short Fiction of ’87

The Editor’s Choice: The Best Short Fiction for 1987 Vol. IV compiled by George E. Murphy Jr. (Bantam/Windstone: $17.95, cloth; $8.95 paper; 228 pages)

Short story annuals are the holiday gift baskets of the publishing industry. Crammed with an eclectic collection of regional specialties and proven favorites, they arrive on your doorstep as the literary equivalent of red-hot Texas barbecue sauce, Louisiana pralines, Vermont maple syrup, Wisconsin Cheddar and Minnesota wild rice; jam, chocolate and biscuits tucked into the crevices; a split of domestic champagne crowning the lot.

Though the food isn’t supposed to be consumed at one meal or the anthology read at a single sitting, the book reviewer must do exactly that--top a sweetly traditional coming-of-age story from Seventeen with a tough, sexy number from Playboy; follow a straightforward and affecting account of a farm auction with a chic selection from Vanity Fair; read a heartbreaker about a couple recovering from the loss of a child; then move right along to a wry encounter between a sycophantic yuppie and an Alabama dog breeder.

The Best Short Fiction for 1987 deserves to be read the way it originally appeared, separated by decent intervals; each piece in its appropriate context. Here we’ve got Cosmo and Redbook cheek by jowl with Shenandoah and the Paris Review; Seventeen in extremely mature and sophisticated company. Read the selections the way you’d explore the gourmet delights--picking and choosing, leaving a few things on the pantry shelf for emergencies.

While eight of the 18 stories come from the smaller literary journals and quarterlies and one each from those two New England stalwarts, Harper’s and Atlantic Monthly, the other eight originally appeared in magazines usually lumped together as “the slicks”; publications bulging with perfume samplers, diet plans and up-to-the-minute information on sexually transmitted diseases. Though in a few cases you could guess which story originated where, the similarities are more striking than the differences, a sign that the once yawning gap between commerce and art is closing fast.

Somewhat surprisingly, virtually all of the stories follow traditional rules of plot, character and structure. “The Best Short Fiction of 1987” isn’t the place to look for innovation or experiment, though a few of the tales contain strong elements of fantasy. Although more than half are told in the first person, the authors have clearly taken pains to transcend personal experience and go for the gold of broad relevance. Judging from this anthology, writers are no more narcissistic than ever before, though introspection does seem the dominant mode and the mind the favorite territory.

While exotic locale isn’t as significant as it used to be, several authors have given themselves geographically, ethnically or economically unusual backgrounds. In “The Middle Man” Bharati Mukherjee writes as a Sephardic Jew from Baghdad, Smyrna, Aleppo and the Borough of Queens, now down in Central America with a couple of gun-running Texas boys. If there’s a prevailing trend, it seems to be away from the station wagons and sports cars of Cheever country towards pick-ups and lunch pails, out of the suburbs into the hard-hat areas and boondocks. Antic humor is conspicuously absent; satire is mild and generally good-humored. Political and social attitudes are seldom stated; the emotional tenor is placid.

There is only one Vietnam story, “The Things They Carried,” infusing the hackneyed device of the ‘inventory’ with fresh vitality. In this strong entry, we’re not looking into medicine chests or closets but into field packs, a change of venue that makes a truly significant difference. A truce has apparently been declared in the war between the sexes and some role switching has obviously taken place. The men are writing knowledgeably about gynecological problems and child care while the spunky female survivor in Leigh Allison Wilson’s “Masse’ ” is driving a UPS truck by day and shooting pool for fun and profit at night.

In these stories, writers of both sexes seem to have come to terms with their situations. They accept their homosexuality, slowly recover from the death of a parent or child, bounce back from failure and manage to cope with solitude. Rebellion has turned to resignation; the ennui that pervaded so much recent fiction replaced by resolve if not always by effective action.

Result of Trade-Offs

Evenly divided between the mildly adventurous and the patently commercial, “The Best Short Fiction” often seems to be the result of trade-offs--the isolated high school boy from Seventeen for a surrealistic exercise from the Georgia Review; a divorced travel agent plucked from Cosmopolitan discovering that her business is a grand way to meet eligible men, swapped for Richard McCann’s candid memoir of an early adolescence spent dressing in his mother’s clothes; an exact balance between Mary Gordon in Ms. and Tim O’Brien in Esquire; Sue Miller in Mlle. and Mukherjee in Playboy.

If the result is a bit bland for readers seeking new literary directions, this particular annual has always attempted to represent mainstream fiction--light on the salsa, generous with the butterscotch topping and the smoked almonds.