best american nonrequired reading of 2010 excerpt

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t h e b e s t a m e r i c a n

NONREQUIREDREADING ™

2010■

e d i t e d b y

DAVE EGGERS

in t roduc t ion by

DAVID SEDARIS

managing editor

JESSE NATHAN

a mar iner or ig ina l

houghton miff l in harcour t

boston ■ new york

2010



Copyright © 2010 by Houghton Mifin Harcourt Publishing CompanyIntroduction copyright © 2010 by David Sedaris

all rights reserved

The Best American Series is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifin Harcourt Pub-lishing Company. The Best American Nonrequired Reading is a trademark of HoughtonMifin Harcourt Publishing Company.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Per-missions, Houghton Mifin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South,New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

issn : 1539-316xisbn : 978-0-547-24163-0

Printed in the United States of Americado c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

“This Is Just to Say” (excerpt of 4 lines) by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Po-ems: Volume I, 1909-1939.Copyright ©1938 by New Directions Publishing. Reprinted bypermission of New Directions Publishing.

“Those Winter Sundays.” Copyright © 1996 by Robert Hayden, from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden by Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Used by permission of Liv-eright Publishing Corporation.

“I Am Sorry that I Didn’t Write a Comedy Piece” by Wendy Molyneux. First published atwww.therumpus.net as part of the “Funny Women” series. Copyright © 2009 by WendyMolyneux. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“A Note from Stephen Colbert” by Stephen Colbert. First published in Newsweekon June15, 2009. Copyright © 2009 by Newsweek, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Newsweek.

Six-Word memoirs copyright © 2009 by the authors. Reprinted by permission of SmithMagazine.

“Best American Letter to the Editor” by Nazlee Radboy. First published in Bidoun. Copy-right © 2009 by Nazlee Radboy. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Overqualied Cover Letters” by Joey Comeau. First published in Overqualied. Copyright© 2009 by Joey Comeau. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Trail” by Barry Lopez. First published in Orion. Copyright © 2009 by Barry Lopez.Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Best American Illustrated Missed Connections” by Sophie Blackall. First published atwww.missedconnectionsny.blogspot.com. Copyright © 2009 by Sophie Blackall. Reprintedby permission of the artist.

“Best American Poems Written in the Last Decade by Soldiers and Citizens in Iraq andAfghanistan” by Salam Dawai, Soheil Najm, Khadijah Queen, Brian Turner, Haider Al-Kabi, Sadek Mohammed, Abdul-Zahra Zeki, and Sabah Khattab. Certain of these poemsrst appeared in Flowers of Flame, Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam toIraq, Phantom Noise, and the Northwest Review. Copyright © 2009, 2010 by the authors. Re-printed by permission of the authors, Kore Press, and/or Alice James Books.



“War Dances” from War Dances by Sherman Alexie. First published in The New Yorker. Copyright © 2009 by Sherman Alexie. Reprinted by permission of the author and Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

“Like I Was Jesus” by Rachel Aviv. First published in Harper’s Magazine. Copyright ©

2009 by Rachel Aviv. Reprinted by permission of the author.“Burying Jeremy Green” by Nora Bonner. First published in Shenandoah. Copyright ©2009 by Nora Bonner. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Carnival” by Lilli Carré. First published in MOME. Copyright © 2009 by Lilli Carré.Reprinted by permission of the artist.

“Capital Gains” by Rana Dasgupta. First published in Granta. Copyright © 2009 by RanaDasgupta. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Encirclement” by Tamas Dobozy. First published in Granta. Copyright © 2009 byTamas Dobozy. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Man of Steel” by Bryan Furuness. First published in Ninth Letter . Copyright © 2009 by

Bryan Furuness. Reprinted by permission of the author.“Half Beat” by Elizabeth Gonzalez. First published in The Greensboro Review.Copyright ©2009 by Elizabeth Gonzalez. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Gentlemen, Start Your Engines” by Andrew Sean Greer. First published in the San Fran-cisco Panorama. Copyright © 2009 by Andrew Sean Greer. Reprinted by permission of theauthor and McSweeney’s.

Excerpt from The Photographer by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre and Frédéric Lemer-cier. English language translation by Alexis Siegel. English language translation copyright© 2009 by First Second. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

“What, of This Goldsh, Would You Wish?” by Etgar Keret, translated by Nathan Eng-

lander. First published in Tin House. Copyright © 2009 by Etgar Keret and Nathan Eng-lander. Reprinted by permission of the author and the translator.

“Fed to the Streets” by Courtney Moreno. First published in L.A. Weeklyas “Help Is on theWay.” Copyright © 2009 by Courtney Moreno. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Tiger’s Wife” by Téa Obreht. First published in The New Yorker . Copyright © 2009 byTéa Obreht. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Breakdown” by T. Ott. First published in MOME. Copyright © 2009 by T. Ott. Reprintedby permission of the artist.

“Ideas” by Patricio Pron, translated by Mara Faye Lethem. First published in The Paris Re-view. Copyright © 2009 by Patricio Pron and Mara Faye Lethem. Reprinted by permission

of the author and the translator.“Vanish” by Evan Ratliff. First published in Wired. Copyright © 2009 by Evan Ratliff. Re-

printed by permission of the author.“Seven Months, Ten Days in Captivity” by David Rohde. First published in the New York

Times.Copyright © 2009 by David Rohde and the New York Times. Reprinted by permissionof the author and the New York Times.

“Tent City, U.S.A.” by George Saunders. First published in GQ . Copyright © 2009 byGeorge Saunders. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Nice Little People” from Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fictionby Kurt Von-negut. Published in Zoetrope: All-Story. Copyright © 2009 by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Trust. Re-

printed by permission of Delacorte Press, an imprint of the Random House PublishingGroup, a division of Random House, Inc.

“Freedom” by Amy Waldman. First published in Boston Review. Copyright © 2009 by AmyWaldman. Reprinted by permission of the author.



conten ts

Editor’s Note ■ xiIntroduction by David Sedaris ■ xv

I

Best American Woman Comedy Piece Written by a Woman ■ 3 from www.therumpus.net , Wendy Molyneux

Best American Sentences on 0 of Books Published in2009 ■ 5

Best American Magazine Letters Section ■ 8 from Newsweek,Stephen Colbert

Best American Fast-Food-Related Crimes■

10Best American Gun Magazine Headlines ■ 11

Best American Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak ■ 13 from Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak

Best American New Patents ■ 14 from United States Patent and Trademark Ofce

Best American Tweets ■ 16 from www.twitter.com



Contents / vii

Best American Letter to the Editor ■ 17 from Bidoun

Best American Overqualied Cover Letters ■ 18 from Overqualied,Joey Comeau

Best American Fictional Character Names ■ 22

Best American 350-Word Story ■ 23 from Orion, Barry Lopez

Best American Farm Names ■ 24

Best American First Lines of Poems Published in 2009 ■ 26

Best American Journal Article Titles Published in 2009 ■ 28

Best American Illustrated Missed Connections ■ 29 from www.missedconnectionsny.blogspot.com, Sophie Blackall

Best American New Band Names ■ 37

Best American Lawsuits ■ 38

Best American Poems Written in the Last Decade or So by Soldiersand Citizens in Iraq and Afghanistan ■ 40

II

Sherman Alexie. war dances ■ 49 from War Dances

Rachel Aviv. like i was jesus ■ 75 from Harper’s Magazine

Nora Bonner. burying jeremy green ■ 95 from Shenandoah

Lilli Carré. the carnival ■ 104 from MOME

Rana Dasgupta. capital gains ■ 137 from Granta



Contents / viii

Tamas Dobozy. the encirclement ■ 165 from Granta

Bryan Furuness. man of steel ■ 180 from Ninth Letter

Elizabeth Gonzalez. half beat ■ 198 from The Greensboro Review

Andrew Sean Greer. gentlemen, start your engines ■ 213 from San Francisco Panorama

Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre, and Frédéric Lemercier.

the photographer ■

238 from The Photographer, translated from French by Alexis Siegel

Etgar Keret. what, of this goldfish, would youwish? ■ 262 from Tin House, translated from Hebrew by Nathan Englander

Courtney Moreno. fed to the streets ■ 268 from L.A. Weekly

Téa Obreht. the tiger ’s wife ■ 287 from The New Yorker

T. Ott. breakdown ■ 308 from MOME

Patricio Pron. ideas ■ 316 from The Paris Review,translated from Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem

Evan Ratliff. vanish ■ 323 from Wired

David Rohde. seven months, ten days in captivity ■ 345 from New York Times

George Saunders. tent city, u.s.a. ■ 395 from GQ

Kurt Vonnegut. the nice little people ■ 431 from Zoetrope: All-Story



Amy Waldman. freedom ■ 439 from Boston Review

Contributors’ Notes ■

456The Best American Nonrequired Reading Committee ■ 463Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2009 ■ 472About 826 National ■ 479

Contents / ix



edi tor ’s no te

forgive me if you already know this , but this collection isassembled every year with the assistance of two groups of high schoolstudents — one from the San Francisco Bay Area, and one from theAnn Arbor and Ypsilanti areas of mid to lower Michigan.

I run the class that meets in San Francisco, so I’ll describe whathappens there (I can’t speak for Michigan, but I expect they woulduse more candles and smoke machines). Once a week, we meet inthe basement of McSweeney’s, a small publishing company in theMission District of San Francisco. Some of the students take the sub-way and get off at the 16th and Mission stop. Some take the bus;some get rides from their parents. And a few are lucky enough tohave a vehicle of their own. In any case, they travel up to an hour,

each way, to sit around and talk about contemporary literature.In this basement, we have a bunch of couches, chairs, and even a

beanbag (which no one uses because beanbags should never have beenmanufactured, as they are an affront to all that is holy). The studentsfeel good in this basement, in large part because the space is dingy,ill kept, and smells of laundry that needs washing but can’t be found.When they arrive, the students rst look through the mail. Every weekwe get about twenty new literary journals, magazines, self-publishedzines, comics, and various other periodicals. The students read theseperiodicals, looking for stories that hit them in the gut. They pick up



Editor’s Note / xii

the Kenyon Reviewor Tin House looking to be wowed. When the wowhappens, the student gives that story or essay or whatever it is to ourmanaging editor, Jesse Nathan — who is, it should be said, a Jewish

Mennonite (really!) from Kansas — and he makes copies for thewhole class so we can read and discuss.Sometimes the discussions are spirited, sometimes not so much,

sometimes too much so. Sometimes no one can understand what thehell the student rst saw in the story. Other times the class splits, lit-erally in two. This year was especially interesting, given that we hadtwo very vocal members, Tenaya Nasser-Frederick and Will Gray, whooften ended up on opposite sides of the room and of opinion. Theywould bark back and forth at each other — respectfully, it should besaid — and then, at the end, Will would have the nal say. His nalsay sounded something like, “Well, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong andI’m right and I think this discussion is over.” This is how he got thenickname “The Hammer.” (More about the Hammer, and all of thestudents from the Bay Area and Michigan, is available in the back of the book, starting on page 463. )

But no matter what the selection process is, it’s always astound-ingly subjective. We have no scientic method, no spreadsheetsor checks and balances. We have only bins that say Yesand No andMaybe. When we get close to having enough Yeses to make a book,we put copies of all the selections on a Ping-Pong table in the base-ment. This is not a joke. We put all the yeses on one side of the net,and then we look at each story, and when we’re absolutely sure thatthat Yes is a Yes,and should be printed in these pages, then we “move

it over” — meaning we actually move it over the net — into the DeniteYesarea. That is the most ofcial and scientic part of the process,that jumping of the net.

Each year we try to strike many balances simultaneously. We try tostrike a balance between ction, nonction, comics, and other forms.Most of all, we try to strike a balance between end-of-the-world sce-narios and coming-of-age stories. These two topics, it turns out, con-stitute about eighty percent of what we read in a given year, and we’vedecided that a few examples of each are enough.

Next we choose a cover artist and an introducer. Every year westart with a long list, which invariably includes Dave Chapelle and



Editor’s Note / xiii

Oprah Winfrey, neither of whom are likely to see a letter we mightwrite them. So we begin to think of people we might be able to get aletter close to, and this year the students overwhelmingly chose Mau-

rice Sendak to provide the cover art. He opened up his sketchbooks,and suggested a page of drawings that formed a narrative about a girlwho is almost eaten by her television set. We agreed that this wasperfect for the collection, and we thank him heartily for being gen-erous, for being kind, and for having great mischievous eyes and amouth unable to tell lies.

We’d also like to thank David Sedaris, who is pretty much a saintfor all he’s done for the organization known as 826. As you mightknow, the proceeds from this book go toward 826 National, whichhelps support a network of independently operated writing and tu-toring centers around the country. At the 826 centers, the work wedo serves kids ages six to eighteen, and runs the gamut from helpingEnglish language learners with basic reading and writing skills to ad-vanced publishing projects with high schoolers.

One of the ways we raise money for the programs is by askingwell-known authors like Mr. Sedaris to edit books and donate the pro-ceeds to 826. The rst such book was edited by Michael Chabon (who,with his spouse, the writer Ayelet Waldman, has supported 826 in athousand ways from the start). Chabon edited a book called Thrill-ing Tales, which extolled the virtues of so-called genre writing, andencouraged contemporary writers to explore the western, the mys-tery, the horror story, and sci-. The sales of Thrilling Tales paid therent on our San Francisco building for a full year. Talk about the

power of the written word!So, after that, we embarked on a program of publishing at least

one of these “benet books” a year. For the second “benet book,”we thought, Who could follow Michael Chabon? Who has that kindof genius and generosity? And we thought of David Sedaris. And didSedaris hesitate? We don’t know. He was living in France at the time,and we could not see his behavior while he was deciding. But hedidn’t seemto have hesitated. He said yes and picked his favorite shortstories for a collection that became Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules. That book paid the rent on the building for another year,and our faith in the power of publishing was again renewed.



Editor’s Note / xiv

So when the Best American Nonrequired Reading group choosesan introducer, every year — in addition to Oprah Winfrey and DaveChapelle — the students invariably suggest David Sedaris. But be-

cause he’d done that above-named collection, we’ve always given hima break. But this time, after ve or so years of giving him a break,I allowed the students to go ahead and ask Mr. Sedaris to write theintro, and they did so by sending him this photo:

How could anyone say no to a photo like that? The answer is thatno one can. And Sedaris did not say no. He wrote a very edifyingintro, different from virtually anything he’s written before, and forthis we’re endlessly thankful. We’re also thankful that you pickedup this book, and we hope you like the selections. This year, maybemore than ever before, we really went eclectic, and we think we have

a fantastically diverse and challenging group of stories that some-how, improbably, cohere around what it’s like to be alive right now, in2010 — as opposed to 1822, which would have been far dustier.

— D. E.



in t roduct ion

Who Ate the Plums?

the year after my mother died , I was presented with a box.In it were letters I’d sent from summer camp (“I’ll pay you to comeand get me”) and from my rst year at college (“I swear I’ll pay youto come and get me”). There were other things in there as well, andthough I thought I would plow right through them, the task provedtoo depressing. The box went into storage in New York, and whenmy boyfriend, Hugh, and I moved to France, I had it shipped to Nor-mandy, where it sat on a shelf in the room I use as an ofce. It wasonly recently that I reopened it. The letters were there, and, beneaththem, a mildewed envelope with my name on it. The handwritingwas my mother’s, and inside, amongst the report cards and vaccina-tion certicates, I found two poems I had written in the fth grade.

You, I thought.Like most children, I wrote a lot in elementary school: articles on

whales, essays praising presidents and Thanksgiving, all of them for-gotten, and for good reason. These poems, however, had stuck withme, haunted me for over forty years. The rst one is titled, “Will WeEver Find Peace?”

If man will ever nd peace is a question to beholdWill we ever stop nding soldier’s bodies dead and cold?I think that I would rather die while sleeping in my bedThan die in Vietnam, a bullet through my head



Introduction / xvi

The men who come out of war I think can surely tellThat General Sherman was right when he said that war is hell.

Because I was only twelve, I think I can forgive myself the sloppy me-ter. What I can’t forgive, regardless of my age, is the self righteoustone, and the demand to be taken seriously. “I think that I wouldrather die while sleeping in my bed / Than die in Vietnam, a bulletthrough my head.”

Oh, really. How perfectly odd of you. Because the rest of us would loveto spend our last few hours in an unforgiving jungle, far from friends and family, being stabbed and shot at by people in pointed sun hats who put peanut butter on chicken.

And quoting General Sherman?I got an A-minus on my rst poem, and a note from the

teacher — “Good Work!” — written in the margins of my second,which was titled, simply, “War.”

You nd some bit of creative writing you did in the fth grade,and hope it will tell you something about your life: Here is a ght Ihad with my best friend. This is what it smells like when you lay yourmother’s pocketbook on the grill. For a while I thought that these po-ems told me nothing. Then I realized that they did — it just wasn’tsomething I wanted to be reminded of. Behind their clumsiness,they tell me who I wanted to be — not my petty, self-absorbed self,but society’s conscience, the justice seeker who opens your eyes tothe suffering that’s all around you.

I don’t know what drove my mother to hang on to those poems.

Perhaps she saw them as evidence of a change, seeds of the personI would hopefully grow up to become. When I found them in herdresser drawer the summer after the sixth grade, and tried to throwthem away, she grabbed them out of my hands.

“But they’re awful,” I told her.“Maybe so, but they’re mine,” she said.I gured she’d put them in one of three hiding places, spots my

parents thought of as safe, but that my sisters and I had been raidingsince we were old enough to walk: the crawl space above the car port,for instance. That was like the hidden tomb in a mummy movie, the



Introduction / xvii

sort of place that should have been marked with carvings: the head of a bird, a cane with thorns on it, three laughing skulls turned towardthe wind, symbols that, when translated, spelled “Do not enter here

unless you wish to be changed forever.”We found unspeakable things in that crawl space. Things that tookour childlike innocence, and, in the time it took to focus a ashlight,obliterated it. There were the lesser hiding places as well, lockups forconscated machetes and homemade battle axes. My mother musthave carried the poems upon her person, secured, maybe, in somesort of girdle as I looked everywhere, and I mean everywherefor them,with no success.

In time I lost my ability to quote from “Will We Ever Find Peace,” butnever was it or “War” forgotten. The disdain I felt toward my ownpoems affected the whole genre, the only exception being limericks,which are basically dirty jokes that rhyme. The other kinds of poetry,the kind written entirely in lower case letters, or the kind where a sin-gle sentence is broken into eight different lines, I nd confounding. Ithink I was out sick the day we learned to read them, and it never oc-curred to me that I could catch up, or, heaven forbid, teach myself.

In William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just To Say,” for instance, doyou begin with “I have eaten” and then wait a while before movingonto “the plums”?

Should an equal amount of time pass before “that were in” and“the icebox”?

If not, why not just put it all on the same line? I have eaten the

plums that were in the icebox.I get the idea that poets are paid, not by the word, but by how

much space they take up.

Howelsetoexplainit?



Introduction / xviii

It’s easy to believe when looking at such things that parts of themare missing, that words and commas got erased or were blown away,like one of those church signs after a strong wind. The bits that are

left function as clues, the poem itself not a story, but a problem,something to be sweated over and solved. Why not make things eas-ier and just say what you mean? Why be all, well, poeticalabout it?

It’s the way a lot of people view contemporary art — as if it’s be-yond them, as if, without the references and countless inside jokes,they can’t possibly get a foothold. I’ve found, though, that if you relax,you can pretty much tell what, say, a Robert Gober sculpture is about.This is something I learned in art school. A slide would be shown of a crazy looking installation and after feeling stupid and intimidated,I’d actually look at the thing. A few minutes later the teacher wouldoffer an interpretation, and I’d nd that I had gotten it after all, that apiece of art, much like a short story, could be read. The key was to notbe uptight about it, to enjoy the attempt. To surrender.

I only recently realized that the same approach could be applied topoetry. What enlightened me was a podcast in which the host and aguest listen to a poem, and then proceed to talk about it. Before goingfurther, I need to identify myself as an audiophile. There are thosewho dismiss the idea of listening to literature, who feel that it doesn’tcount the way that reading does. And it’s true that they’re differentsensations.

When sitting on the sofa and reading with my eyes, I enter theworld of the book. When listening, on the other hand, the book comesinto my world, the place where I iron clothes, defrost the freezer, and

break up rewood with an ax. I started with audio in the early nine-ties, back when the titles were recorded onto cassettes. Then I movedon to CDs and, eventually, to the MP3 player, which lead me, in turn,to podcasts, and one in particular called Poetry Off the Shelf .

I originally downloaded it thinking, not of myself, but of Hugh’smother, who likes serious things. I was going to force her to sit in achair with my iPod on, but then I ran out of books to listen to. Com-pany was coming, I had a day’s worth of house work ahead of me, soI thought, What the hell.

The rst podcast that I listened to featured the late James Schuylerreading “Korean Mums.” I don’t know when he recorded it, but his



Introduction / xix

voice was old-sounding, and he read the way one might read an itemfrom the paper. This is to say that he was steady but not overly dra-matic. After listening to him twice, I listened to a short analysis of-

fered by the podcast’s host, and the week’s special guest. A few smallreferences went over my head, but otherwise, I seem to have gotteneverything. Equally surprising is that it never felt like work, that itwas, in every sense of the word, a pleasure.

In the next podcast, I discovered Robert Hayden, who died in1980, and who wore glasses with superthick lenses. This might seembeside the point, but I liked the fact that he was not in any way fash-ionable-looking — was, in fact, quite nerdy. The poem they featuredwas about his father, who’d busted his ass to get up early and warmthe house while everyone else was in bed. The poet never thankedhim for it — treated him, from the sounds of it, pretty poorly. Now helooks back, and ends with the following lines:

Speaking indifferently to him,who had driven out the coldand polished my good shoes as well.What did I know, what did I knowof love’s austere and lonely ofces?

The poem says eloquently in ve cut-up lines what I have been try-ing to say my whole life.

Why don’t poets just come out with it?Uh, actually, I think they do.

From Robert Hayden I moved to Philip Larkin, then to FannyHowe and Robert Lowell. The more I’m exposed to, the more en-raptured I become, the world feeling both bigger and smaller at thesame time. Poetry, I think. Where has it been all my life! I said to Hugh,“I feel like I’ve discovered a whole new variety of meat.

Andit’sfree!”

David Sedaris

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