Prize Stories 2000: The O. Henry Awards (Pen / O. Henry Prize Stories)
An elegant salvo in the ongoing debate about the state of the American short story, this collection, celebrating the 80th anniversary of the famous O. Henry Awards, raises some questions about the uses of fiction. Where, as one of the prize jurors, Michael Cunningham, remarks, are the  icy, intellectual stories of 30 and 40 years ago? Are we less cynical? Or so  cynical that we crave an injection of feelings? Short fiction is getting longer  and richer, stuffed with anti-Modern sensory detail and the complicated inner  lives of its characters--more Henry James than Hemingway. (Only oneNew  Yorkerstory made the cut for these awards.) Emotion is back in vogue, and  with it the realistic, "well-made" story. In subject matter, death is in; sex is  out.Granted, some of this reflects the taste of the series editor, Larry Dark, who  selects the 20 award stories from 3,000 or so contenders each year. First-,  second-, and third-place winners are decided on by a panel of prize jurors--for  2000, Pam Houston, George Saunders, and Cunningham. Whether it confirms your  suspicions about American publishing or seems more or less inevitable, many of  these O. Henry stories are by well-known writers, among them Russell Banks, Mary  Gordon, Andrea Barrett, and John Edgar Wideman. (Wideman wins first prize here  for "Weight," which Cunningham describes as a combination of autobiography and  fiction that "spill over into each other because the story's messy, deeply  personal emotions require it.") Nathan Englander, an exceptionally well-placed  newcomer, is represented with "The Gilgul of Park Avenue." There is a minor,  posthumously published Raymond Carver story as well ("Kindling"), a fictional  treatment of material that he had also addressed in a poem called "To Begin  With."Among the newer writers, Judy Budnitz ("Flush") and Kevin Brockmeier stand out  for their unexpected observations and their devotion to the word. In  Brockmeier's luminous love story, "These Hands," a male nanny forms a helpless,  permanent attachment to his 18-month-old charge. Leaving her bedroom one night  after putting her in the crib, he lifts a red plastic See 'n Say from the  toyshelf and points its dial at the picture of a lion:This, said the machine,is a robin, and it whittered a little  aria. When he turned the dial to a picture of a lamb on a tussock of grass, it  said the same thing. Dog and pony, monkey and elephant:robin--twit twit  whistle. Lewis set the toy against a wall, listening to the cough of a  receding car. He passed through the dining room and climbed the back stairway,  wandered the deep and inviolate landscape of the house--solemn with the thought  of faulty lessons, and of how often we are shaped in this way.Although the O. Henry winners provide a generally representative sample of the  best of recent American short fiction, this collection makes no acknowledgment  of the tremendous boom in erotica in the last three years, or the persistence of  literary experimentation by a few dark and wayward souls.--Regina Marler