The Best American Short Stories 1983

by Anne Tyler (Editor)

Short Stories by Ann Tyler, Bill Barich, John Updike, Carolyn Chute, Ursula K. Le Guin, Raymond Carver, and many others.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies

332 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. She has published 20 novels, her debut novel being If Morning Ever Comes in (1964). Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons , was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dearly love reading short stories, and this Best American series is one of my favorite ways to expose myself to a wide array of writers’ attempts at this sometimes tricky — but often wonderfully rewarding — form.

Happily, this 41-year-old anthology is one of the strongest editions of the series I’ve yet read. Anne Tyler as the guest editor chose compelling, inventive stories that featured quirky, alive, complex human beings, and there were blessedly few clunkers among the book’s 20 selections. My only real complaint is that these stories featured almost no non-white, non-hetero characters (Louise Erdrich’s fantastic “Scales” being a notable exception), but that may have been partially a factor of what sorts of stories were being published at the time.

All in all, I’m glad I found a used copy of this edition, to expand my library’s collection of this series with such a worthy entry.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the back half of this in a free bin in a library years and years ago. My back half copy starts most of the way through the second of two Ursula K Le Guin stories, and I looked at the other stories missing from the first half and there was also a Raymond Carver and all three were from the New Yorker, so in addition to reading the stories from the back half, I also got a one week introductory online subscription to the New Yorker archives so I could read the three other short stories I was most interested in, as well.

I ended up not really liking the Raymond Carver, but most all the rest of what I read was very good.

[Jakon Hays · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a tough one. I just did not have the will to push through the reading of these stories.


Honestly, I thought that this was a bland collection.


Tyler in her introduction said that this anthology “would almost bounce; it would almost shout”.


I’d have to strongly disagree with that statement.


Favorites and their authors -


Carolyn Chute - “Ollie, Oh...”

Joseph Epstein - The Count and the Princess

John Updike - Deaths of Distant Friends


The anthology introduced me to Chute which was pleasant. I like to see a writer like her appear and I look forward to reading more by her in future collections.


The inclusion of Updike, and knowing that he is the editor for the next collection pushed me towards starting research on him and taking on an excitement similar to that of how I felt when dealing with Gardner.


Now with the numbers – I really don’t feel like spending a minute more with this year.


Time to read the book and to finish posts about the collection:


1 month 18 days

which is

6 weeks and 6 days

which

48 days


and this works out to:


1 story every 2.4 days.


Gender profile of authors:

11 Female – 9 Male


And finally, there were 8 stories from authors that had their story originally appear in the New Yorker.


I spent too much time with this book, and I will be happy to place it back up on my bookshelf.

http://yearsofbass.blogspot.com/2010/...

[Susan Emmet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pulled this anthology off the shelf again many years after I bought and first read it.
I still like the collection although it's a bit heavy on New Yorker folk as editor Anne Tyler acknowledges. Carver, Chute, Mason, LeGuin, Erdrich, Wright Morris, Woiwode - a fine gathering of minds.
Huge Indians riding small cycles while repeatedly escaping from jail...boys climbing trees, just to see what's out there...rich women mending their broken shoes with duct tape...boys who've lost two sets of parents and shouldered through five foster homes...earless and toeless Ollie-Oh dying under the truck...the Count, a professor, who falls in love with a much younger woman who intrudes on his herring and love of Bach and Beethoven...many surprises in these stories and much to chew on.
1983 was a pretty good year!

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

After spending about a month with this collection, I feel confident saying that, on the whole, Anne Tyler and I do not look for the same things in a story. I'm a bit baffled, in fact, as to what her criteria must have been here -- much of this collection struck me as minor, bush-league stuff, filled with the usual readymade dramatic premises (divorce, pregnancy, cancer, etc.) but without any of the invention or originality needed to make these premises interesting again.

That said, as always, there were a few solid pieces:

John Updike - "Deaths of Distant Friends" (far and away the best of the collection)
Wright Morris - "Victrola"
James Bond - "A Change of Season"
Raymond Carver - "Where I'm Calling From"
Ursula K. Le Guin - "Sur"
Bobbie Ann Mason - "Graveyard Day"