Dave Eggers and a committee of high school students chose the articles for “The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007.” Eleven teens from the Bay Area searched through hundreds of periodicals and independent publications to find their favorite articles. After discussing these pieces with one another, they handed their selections to Eggers, who whittled the entries down to the volume in the reader’s hand. Eggers claims the purpose of the volume is to illustrate the abundance of decent American publications. “Not all of us Americans appreciate the fact that we have about 150 very good quarterlies in this country,” Eggers has said.
Many readers do forego “The American Scholar” or “The Kenyon Review” for “The New Yorker” or the “The Economist.” In an ideal world, condensed news sources would be unnecessary because the majority of the population would absorb cultural, political, and economic news through sources with less journalistic prose. Such diction lends the reader to believing too strongly in the writer’s veracity. Unfortunately, the editors blithely ignore the abundance of published material.
Eggers’s crusade for didacticism has become quite public in recent years. Not only did the author found one of the country’s leading alternative literary magazines, “McSweeney’s” (much of which is available online at http://mcsweeneys.net), but he has also established 826 Valencia tutoring centers in the majority of west coast metropolitan areas. Eggers’s inflated sense of self-importance was apparent in his brilliant but flawed debut, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” and became increasingly noticeable until the publication of his most recent novel, “What is the What.” In the work, he finally displaces his own neurotic insecurities and takes up the subject of someone other than himself. With “What is the What,” Eggers seems to have found strength in his ability to spin metaphor from human activity.
Many of the pieces found in “The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007” are inspired stories or articles by prominent authors. Household names Miranda July and Jennifer Egan contribute. July’s stories present mundane situations in an uncomfortable, inspired light. Scott Carrier’s essay on Burma transforms the self-evident to the profound. Jonathan Ames explicates the pitiable death and transformation of subcultures in “Middle American Gothic.” Lee Klein’s particularly mundane “All Aboard the Bloated Boat” compares Jimi Hendrix and Barry Bonds. “The New Yorker,” “American Short Fiction,” and “Zoetrope” are primary sources for these articles. A graphic novel is excerpted, and silly lists are provided for drunken amusement.
On the whole, however, the editorial board’s choices are unfulfilling. The introduction, by the darling, misinformed Sufjan Stevens, sets the lackluster tone. Stevens admits that his immersion in an arts-heavy Detroit elementary school prevented him from learning how to read until the third grade. The article proceeds to label individuals, institutions, and cultural objects rather than describe and extrapolate meaning from the examples he provides.
“The glorious project placement of the advertising age would certainly inspire in me all kinds of wild literary exploits,” Stevens writes.
Although his teacher used mass media to instruct him, the dichotomy between practicality and artistic sensibility comes too easily and too quickly. Stevens’s structural ability lags in comparison to his ability to provide endless, cluttered examples.
Admittedly, an attack on Stevens seems unfair. The folk singer-songwriter had previously tried his hand at the short story and failed. However, the flaws in his introduction establish the overarching problems with collections in the “Best American” series as well as its anthologies. The abundance of its assimilated parts does not equal a cohesive narrative or thematic whole. “Nonrequired Reading” works as bedside fluff exactly because its articles allow readers to dip their toes in many different authors’ inkwells. Each article loses its formal clarity when thrown in such a mixed bag. Rather than appreciate an author for the cohesion of an individual work, the structure of the collection forces the reader to make comparative value judgments. While this thought process aids in deciding which authors’ books to purchase and which authors should be avoided altogether, the lack of clear editorial intent leads the collection in too many directions.
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