Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; The Best American Short Stories 2010

And as much advertising around as many book tours for young writers and so it was wonderful to find out who some of these to for me to find out who some of these people were. It was a lot of fun and surprisingly not all that difficult to go from 200 or so short stories down to 50. But let me tell you going from 50 to 20 as I said in my my introduction is a is a form of literary waterboarding. The 50 and that's why at the back of this book I want you to look at the Have a look at those stories the hundred or so listed at the end of this volume. It's a hundred. We decided to throw in you know. OK all right yeah so I mean by all means look around those those stories listed in the back of the book because if there were another guest editor some of those stories would be among this 20. I am a comic

writer and it would be impossible for me to sit before you and say that my comic sensibility did not in some way inform some of the stories maybe that were chosen for this particular volume. And I may have had other prejudices other things that I particularly loved that I particularly loathed at that. That would have made my choices different from some of your choices and I encourage you to read around to discover just how wrong I was about some of these some of the stories that are in that in that back list of stories there are some great absolutely wonderful stories there. The other thing that I that I learned in doing this is what the different what the difference is between admiring something and loving something. There is so much to admire there. In other writers but it's funny Heidi and I were talking about this earlier tonight admiration is almost always something you can explain analyze analyze and sometimes quantify. Falling in love with a short story is like falling in love with a person. It just

defies analysis. Often you simply don't know why. The only thing is that your heart did that little flip flop thing and there you are in love. And probably if you could explain it you wouldn't quite be in love anymore in quite the same way. Writers are particularly difficult audiences because we know the tricks we know a lot of these tricks. We practice a lot of them ourselves. It's tougher to get through our defenses. The 20 stories in this volume I couldn't be more proud of them than if I'd written them. I'd love to have written them myself. I'm I'm I'm very I feel very proprietary about them because they are the 20 stories that most got through my writerly defenses. I shut down all of my knowledge all of my skills all of my art somehow or other none of it mattered. I was seduced. I was in love. And we're going to hear a short portion from a couple of these stories and then we're going to

talk about some of this stuff in the craft of writing short fiction. OK so why don't we do Steve first who is going to story just so I get it right. Donkey greedy donkey get gets punched. Whatever. OK. I have a big man crush now on recruits so interesting. So I just read the first couple of pages of this story. Donkey greedy donkey gets punched. Does not actually have donkeys in it. Is there any people concerned any PETA people. No no donkeys punched in the story. Dr. Raymond had become in the restless leisure of his mid late middle age. A poker player. He had a weakness for the game and the ruthless depressives it attracted one which he probably was fair enough though it wasn't something he wanted known as a psychoanalyst in private practice in the head of two committees

at the San Francisco Institute. He was a short man with a meticulous Trotzky beard and a flair for hats that did not suit him. He cured soles very expensively from an office near his home in Redwood City. On Saturday mornings I put on his sweat suit an orthotic tennis shoes and told Sharon he was off to his tie chee class. Then he shot up one eye one straight straight to artichoke Joe's in San Bruno where he played Texas Hold'em at 3:06 table for five hours straight. He mucked 80 percent of his hands buffed only on the button and lost a little more than he won. He didn't mind losing either if the cards were to blame it was only when he screwed up when he failed to see.