I LOVE this idea:
Like many who came of age in the 1980’s, I have fond memories of the mixed tape. With handwritten spines and horribly mismatched recording levels, mixed tapes served as gestures of friendship, audio love letters to those whom you were sure would finally return your advances if you assembled the perfect compilation, and—most importantly—musical appetizer trays on which the listener might find something they would want to feast upon later.
In that vein, I have often thought how great it would be to put together a compilation for those people I’ve met who say they just aren’t into short fiction—like a Maxell UR-60 jammed with stories that have made me close the book and stare at the cover before continuing to the next one (because let’s face it, the UR-120 didn’t hold the sound quality and was prone to warping and jamming). Hopefully, one of the works would convince the new reader to give short fiction a chance. So, given freedom from copyright/usage laws and royalty requirements, my mixed tape of stories—in somewhat-particular order and with sporadic liner notes—would play as follows:
1. Bigfoot Stole My Wife/I Am Bigfoot—Ron Carlson
(Opening tracks are critical, and this two-story combo is the written equivalent of Cheap Trick’s “Hello There” or the Hold Steady’s “Constructive Summer”)
2. How To Tell A True War Story—Tim O’Brien
3. Why The Sky Turns Red When The Sun Goes Down—Ryan Harty
4. Miles City, Montana—Alice Munro
5. Trust Me—John Updike
6. Bullet In The Brain—Tobias Wolff
7. The B.A.R. Man—Richard Yates
(Save the money you’d spend renting Revolutionary Road on DVD and buy his collected short stories. Sorry, Kate and Leo, just my opinion)
8. Light Action In The Caribbean—Barry Lopez
9. The Grid—Rick Moody
10. Legs—Andre Dubus
(Okay, this is non-fiction, but I had a hard time picking just one Dubus piece and not much fiction is as succinct and powerful as this essay)
11. A Good Man Is Hard To Find—Flannery O’Connor
12. The Bet—Anton Chekhov
13. How To Write A Novel—Gordon Lish
14. What You Pawn I Will Redeem—Sherman Alexie
15. The Isabel Fish—Julie Orringer
16. A Small, Good Thing—Raymond Carver
17. Easy In The Islands—Bob Shacochis
18. Death And The Compass—Jorge Luis Borges
19. The Return--Alistair MacLeod
20. The End of Romance—Larry Brown
21. The Snows Of Kilimanjaro—Ernest Hemingway
(The literary Led Zeppelin—overplayed, overhyped, and in the end, undeniable)
As with all lists, each reader will find glaring omissions, arguable entries, and obvious choices. That’s cool--if you don’t like it, just record over it.
Update: Thanks to Lisa Peet, the idea Marcel came up with has made it into a Readerville Thread and others are adding their own list - feel free to add yours into the comments.
Marcel Jolley is the author of the St. Lawrence Book Award winning story collection, Neither Here Nor There
I just started my own list of favorite short stories last night! I chose the same two Carver and Hemingway stories as you, but I chose O'Connor's "Good Country People." I would love to see some type of "best of" list like the Modern Library's list of best novels. I will have to read some of your other selections. Thanks!
Posted by: Jim Breslin | May 04, 2009 at 09:33 AM
Brilliant idea!
In my first year of college my don, Lucy Rosenthal, gave me a binder full of short stories that I used in my studies over the course of that year. That collection became so important to me that, despite numerous moves and teeny apartments, I still have it.
But, Marcel, I never thought of this as a "mixed tape" before. Brilliant! I think I know what everyone in my life is going to be getting from me this year for the holidays.
Posted by: Diane Goettel | May 09, 2009 at 08:47 AM
Oh, wow, this is a great idea! If I could, I would definitely force everyone to read Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote, instead of watching the bowdlerized screen version with Audrey Hepburn (charming as it is). It's just so much better in print.
Posted by: Laura | May 09, 2009 at 09:31 AM