The Best American Short Stories 1962

his book marks Martha Foley’s twentieth year as editor of THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES. Throughout this period, her annual volumes have been a sensitive seismograph, registering both the passing tremors and eruptive shocks in American fiction. The list of authors recorded during this span ranges from Faulkner to Salinger, Saroyan to Capote, Thurber to McCullers.

It is fitting that this current volume follows in the distinguished tradition of presenting firmly and newly established authors alongside the “firsts.” There is Irwin Shaw’s wry story of an American in Paris secretly witnessing a modern Thermopylae (“Love on a Dark Street”); Arthur Miller’s Pennsylvania Gothic tale (“The Prophecy; John Updike’s poignant view of a boy’s spiritual struggle (“Pigeon Feather”); Flannery O’Connor’s powerful and ironic study of a mother–son relationship (“Everything That Rises Must Converge”). Among the penetrating stories by newer authors are W.H. Gass’s “The Pedersen Kid,” a stark re-creation of madness and murder in a blizzard; George Garrett’s “The Old Army Game,” concerning a horrendous Army top sergeant beside whom Captain Queeg might seem a boy-scout leader; Seymour Epstein’s “Shed One Honest Tear,” a bitter-sweet story of love and illusion lost in an off-Broadway world; E. Lucas Myers’ “The Vindication of Doctor Nestor,” in which a poultry psychiatrist abroad causes an uproarious furore.

As William Peden stated in (ital please) The New York Times (close ital), praising the writers in a previous collection, “One thing they have in common is artistry.” It is this artistry that makes THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES both entertaining and illuminating.