Prize Stories 2001: The O. Henry Awards

by Larry Dark (editor)

Established early in the last century as a memorial to O. Henry, throughout its history this annual collection has consistently offered a remarkable sampling of contemporary short stories. Each year, stories are chosen from large and small literary magazines, and a panel of distinguished writers is enlisted to award top prizes. The result is a superb collection of seventeen inventive, full-bodied stories representing the very best in American and Canadian fiction. And in celebration of this distinguished literary form, Prize Stories 2001 a Special Award for Continuing Achievement is presented to Alice Munro.

FIRST PRIZE
MARY SWAN
The Deep

SECOND PRIZE
DAN CHAON
Big Me

THIRD PRIZE
ALICE MUNRO
Floating Bridge

FRED G. LEEBRON
That Winter

T.CORAGHESSAN BOYLE
The Love of My Life

JOYCE CAROL OATES
The Girl with the Blackened Eye

DAVID SCHICKLER
The Smoker

ANTONYA NELSON
Female Trouble

ELIZABETH GRAVER
The Mourning Door

PICKNEY BENEDICT
A Scientific Romance

RON CARLSON
At the Jim Bridger

LOUISE EDRICH
Revival Road

WILLIAM GAY
The Paperhanger

DALE PECK
Bliss

MURAD KALAM
Bow Down

GEORGE SAUNDERS
Pastoralia

ANDREA BARRETT
Servants of the Map

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies

464 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2001

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had an interesting personal journey with the 2001 edition of the O. Henry Prize Stories. Let’s start with the anecdote that I’m writing this review in January, 2019. Seems I have a little catching up to do, although this will probably never happen.

I started reading the 2001 edition in early 2011. At the time, I was living on Divisadero Street in San Francisco. While I was reading the collection, I moved to Dubuque, Iowa, survived the 2014 polar vortex, and returned to San Francisco. I had numerous jobs during this time: working as a project manager for an educational publisher; a front-desk receptionist for H&R Block; a call-center representative who sold an astonishing collection of absurd miscellanea (jumbo-sized panties that somehow filled a niche for elderly Southern women; flashlights, cheese platters, and bargain-basement wigs); a project manager for a loyalty-program-based tech company that boasted clients with names such as Ugly Stik (fishing rods), Tison (more wigs—I can’t seem to escape them), and Yankee Candle (whose elite line of candles includes scents called “Man Town” and “On Tap.”); a senior editor and writer for the Exploratorium, a world-renowned science-and-art museum in San Francisco; and a content editor for Chase Bank.

I’ve been to a lot of places, seen a lot of things innocent Chads should never see. During this period of geographical-and-occupational identity mishaps, I occasionally pulled out the 2001 O. Henry Collection and read another story. I’m really not sure why I only infrequently visit these collections, but I love opening the O. Henry anthologies and reading new stories by writes I admire—and falling in love with writers whose work I’ve never read.

The 2001 anthology features stories about subjects as bizarre and random as the jobs I had during the eight years it took me to read the anthology. Dan Chaon’s “Big Me” describes an imaginative twelve year old who believes his new neighbor is an older version of himself who has traveled back in time. The two main characters in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s “The Love of My Life” start out as high school sweethearts and end up incarcerated for dumping their unplanned baby into a garbage dumpster. (I realize this brief, probably egregiously inadequate, summary won’t make anyone reading this review want to run out and find the piece. In reality, Boyle’s story is both beautifully written and unflinching in its exploration of love and adult responsibility.) George Saunders’s “Pastoralia” is so long it could almost be termed a novella. The story takes place in a surreal historical-reenactment theme park, and most of the scenes take place within the confines of an artificial cave. The main characters are actors portraying cavepeople, and tensions arise when Janet, the “cave woman” descends into depression and can no longer play her part. The story is filled with Saunders’s trademark eccentric humor, while making scathing commentaries on how corporations treat their workers.

“Floating Bridge” by Alice Munro didn’t win first prize, but it’s the story that resonates most strongly with me. Jinny Lockley wants to leave her husband Neal, but a diagnosis of terminal cancer makes it unnecessary for her to carry through with her decision to divorce him. Unlike many of Munro’s stories, which can skip years and span vast amounts of time, most of the action in “Floating Bridge” takes place during one long afternoon and evening. Jinny and Neal hire Helen, a young woman with a “fresh-out-of-the-egg look…as if one layer of skin were still missing” as a live-in caregiver for Jinny. Neal and Jinny drive Helen to her house to pick up some of her belongings, and Helen’s family invites Jinny and Neal inside for food and drinks. Jinny, who isn’t feeling well, refuses, but Neal agrees. He leaves Jinny sitting outside in the car, alone, for hours. After Neal accompanies Helen and her family inside, Jinny remarks that “to be alone was a great relief.”

The last half of the story is a meditation on isolation and miracles. We learn that Jinny’s cancer has gone through an unexpected remission. The oncologist doesn’t want to raise Jinny’s hopes, but he thinks she’s beaten her illness. Jinny’s first reaction isn’t happiness or relief; it’s the realization that she now must take responsibility for leaving Neal. As Munro writes, “…it was true that what he (the oncologist) had said made everything harder. It made her have to go back and start this year all over again. It removed a certain low-grade freedom. A dull, protecting membrane that she had not even known was there had been pulled away and left her raw.”

Ricky, Helen’s teenage brother, appears during the story’s last few pages. He’s described as “slim and graceful and cocky, with an ingenuous enthusiasm that would probably not get him as far as he hoped.” Time passes. Neal doesn’t leave the house, or even bother to check on Jinny. Ricky offers to drive Jinny home. On the way, he stops the car and guides her across a floating bridge. The symbolism of a bridge might seem obvious (life threatened/life given back; the removal of a decision/the necessity to make a decision), but Munro writes the story’s final moments as a quiet awakening for Jinny. Ricky kisses Jinny softly, and the story ends with these two beautiful sentences, “Jinny felt a rain of compassion, almost like laughter. A swish of tender hilarity, getting the better of her sores and hollows, for the time given.”

“Floating Bridge” is one of Munro’s best stories, which is not a light statement. It’s like saying Starry Night is one of Van Gogh’s best paintings—or that Orion is the most stunning constellation. Besides the pieces by Munro, Chaon, Boyle, and Saunders, I also recommend the following stories in the 2011 edition of the O. Henry Prize Stories: “The Girl with the Blackened Eye” by Joyce Carol Oates,” The Smoker” by David Schickler, “The Mourning Door” by Elizabeth Graver, “At the Jim Bridger” by Ron Carlson, “The Paperhanger” by William Gay, “Bliss” by Dale Peck, and the exquisite “Bow Down” by Murad Kalam.

You should trust my suggestions. I’ve had eight years to think about them.

[Izzy Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a real pain having to rate a novel, especially if you have to rate a collection of stories written by different authors with only one focal point or common denominator- which is capturing the essence of O.Henry's writing legacy. For the uninitiated, O.Henry is a celebrated classic writer known for his plot twists and ironies. The ironic experience I had while reading this compilation was that I didn't enjoy the top 3 selected prize winners compared to the shortlisted selections. Cancer had been a common theme in these short stories, but the plot twist I enjoyed best was one in which the characters suffered series of identity crises after going through life-changing tragedies as portrayed best in Andrea Barrett's Servants of the Map which is also a favorite, by the way, next to George Saunder's Pastoralia and Pickney Benedict's Zog-19: A Scientific Romance which lent the novel a humorous streak after its series of dark and tragic stories. This novel, while enjoyable, ends up being a hit and miss.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love a good short story. I have to confess that I did not read the last story Servants of the Map. I tried but i just couldn't get into it.

My favorite quote from this book is written by Louise Erdrich, in the story Revival Road.

"It is difficult for a woman to admit that she gets along with her own mother. Somehow, it seems to be a form of betrayal. So few do. To join in the company of women, to be adults, we go through a period of proudly boasting of having survived our mother's indifference, anger, overpowering love, the burden of their pain, their tendency to drink or teetotal, their warmth or coldness, praise or criticism, sexual confusion or embarrassing clarity. It isn't enough that our mother sweated, labored, bore their daughters nobly or under total anesthesia or both. No. They must be responsible for our psychic weaknesses for the rest of our lives. It it all right to forgive our fathers. We all know that. But our mothers are held to a standard so exacting it has no principles. They simply must be to blame."

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be honest, I only picked this up in order to read Mary Swan’s The Deep. Which makes this rather hard to rate. Were I just rating The Deep I would happily give it six stars. Rating the collection by necessity must bring it down a bit. A few other gems, a few I would happily have never seen, and some filler.

I had come across a reference to The Deep after reading On Such a Full Sea (I think) and the author remarking on Mary Swan’s use of first-person plural as an inspiration. Couple that with a World War One setting and I was all in. And it is mesmerizing. The unsettling movement of the story, flitting through time without ever wholly grounding the reader. The haunting characterization of the twins, the shifts in voice that create a tapestry of a world, and the ending. Brutal, poignant, perfect.

As a collection, worthy. As a single short story, absolutely incredible.

[Tiny Pants · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I must have read a library copy of this when it was more contemporary and forgotten I had, because while I know a few of the stories in here were familiar from other collections or magazines, I found that sooner or later, I recognized almost all of them. Though this has some standouts -- "Big Me" by Dan Chaon, "The Smoker" (which I recently rediscovered), "Servants of the Map" (Andrea Barrett, whom I'd forgotten how well I like -- overall it's a bit of a bleak collection. You expect thinly-veiled gory retellings of true crimes from Joyce Carol Oates ("The Girl with the Blackened Eye"), but T.C. Boyle? "The Love of My Life" is definitely more affecting than JCO's stuff but still, the material is more Lifetime movie than lit fic. But the all-out award for darkness definitely goes to... hmm... either "Bow Down" (Murad Kalam) or "The Paperhanger" (William Gay). I'm inclined toward the latter, which as with the last set of Prize Stories I read, should have won the Prize if it was really one for a story written in the O. Henry style.

This book marks the beginning of an all-out book-buying binge I went on in Austin and San Antonio last month... I tried to justify shipping boxes of cheap books back to myself with the justification that a) some of them were sociology, and thus I was really advancing my career by buying them b) Half-Price Books is cheap and amazing and c) media mail is even cheaper still than that. This past weekend we unloaded our whole giant bookcase and rearranged all the books in the house... so now I am under a self-imposed book-purchasing moratorium until I put a dent in these shelves.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in college and I could almost give it 5 stars just for introducing me to George Saunders. "Pastoralia" is to this day one of my favorite pieces of writing. I recommend that story and the collection of short stories that has the same name to everyone.

I was reading a lot of short stories at the time and the fact that the names of the short stories in this collection, ring a bell, must be a testament to something. I think this is a solid collection and you should be able to find some story or author within it that you can appreciate.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was quite a good selection of short stories but, unfortunately, it reminded me why I don't read short stories very often--it's too hit and miss, even when talking about the work of just one author, and I'm finally getting into the story when it, to me, abruptly ends. My favorite story would have to be the winner of this collection, the Deep. It's very lyrical and poetic, haunting and intriguing. The preponderance of cancer stories were not the most enjoyable or even that insightful, while Pastoralia, by a humorist, was. Overall, worth a gander.

[📚Linda Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dipped into these stories after reading the first one "The Deep." It was a little too O'Henry-ish for me, so then I read the ones by authors I knew. These were fabulous and include stories by T.C. Boyle, Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates, Louise Erdrich, and WV author Pinckney Benedict. These have stuck with me and I know I will be thinking about the plots, characters, and symbolism for weeks.

[Idyllwilde · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dreadful. The first few were alright, but after that they degenerated into simple shock-value and complete boredom. Somewhere along the way irony must have either lost its meaning, or taken on an entirely new one. I don't think O. Henry would have been impressed.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never thought I would read short stories, but I did enjoy these. I didn't read all of them, but the the few that I did read proved to me that I can pick up a book of short stories if I don't feel like delving into a novel.

[Eveline Chao · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few snoozers, but overall the stories in here were interesting. Not sure how necessary it is for this book to exist though, as pretty much all the stories I liked were by writers I already knew about because they frequently publish in outlets like The New Yorker.

[Adriane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these "best of the year" collections can be a little boring, but this one was pretty great. Lots of good stories.

[Zoe Eileen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zog-19: A Scientific Romance was my favourite. Overall, I was very underwhelmed.

[Debra B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some stories were disturbing, some were sad, one was satirical but all were compelling.

[Johny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like a box full of goodies. Except the winning story.