BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, 1986

If this year's edition were a horse race (and these "bests" can't be denied their competitive aspect), it would be a $3000 claimer. That is, a dud. Maybe it's the tone set by editor Carver from the beginning, in his introduction: a banal Reagan-ish family-and-apple-pie bias ("The reader will find grown-up men and women in the stories—husbands, wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, lovers of every stripe. . ."; "I hope people will read these stories for pleasure and amusement, for solace, courage. . .a sense of union maybe. . ."). In any case, only Donald Barthelme's "Basil From Her Garden" exhibits any distilled imagination; Barthelme gets more elegant about despair with each passing year, able to twist it the way clowns twist those thin animal-making balloons. Amy Hempel's "Today Will Be A Quiet Day" also exhibits a lighter touch when it comes to poignance—as does Alice Munro's "Monsieur Les Deux Chapeaux." But everyone else—tried-and-trues like Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, Frank Conroy, Ann Beattie; or earnest newcomers such as David Michael Kaplan, Jessica Neely, Mona Simpson and Kent Nelson—trades in a kind of realism-as-punishment that makes their stories tiresome and—worse—nearly interchangeable. New talents Ethan Canin ("Star Food") and Christopher McIlroy ("All My Relations") are standout exceptions to the general fog, though—and their work should be looked for with real curiosity in the future. But, otherwise, tired nags ran this course, on the whole.