FICTION

NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH: The Year’s Best, 1993 edited by Shannon Ravenel. (Algonquin: $10.95; 376 pp.) It’s interesting to note that a good bit of the work in “New Stories From the South” isn’t particularly Southern. Editor Shannon Ravenel explains this by saying, “Since great characters are what counts in this series, if I have to stretch conventional boundaries to include them, I will.” It’s also interesting to note that the non-Southern stories are among the best in this uneven collection. “Evening,” by Richard Bausch is a stunning portrait of an older man trying desperately to navigate his relationships with loved ones while caught in a terrible depression. In another wonderful story dealing with age, “Marie,” by Edward Jones, the subject is not so much depression as identity. Marie, an old African-American woman, is forced through a series of unusual incidents to put her voice out into the world, and then listen in surprise to what that voice says. Neither piece feels at all Southern.

Strangely enough, the only problem with this anthology has nothing to do with regional concerns or even the stories themselves--although a few are real clunkers. The problem is in the author quotes at the end of each piece. It seems the writers were asked about their stories and many responded by explaining, in some detail, exactly what inspired that particular piece of work. For many of us, one of the joys of fiction is its magical ability to make you completely believe in a different world, a process that’s severely undermined when the writers’ secret machinery is all over the final page. It’s kind of like finding out that your best friend, the person you trust implicitly, is really a robot.