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Frank O'Connor Short Story Award

The 2008 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the heftiest cash prize in the literary world for the short form (35,000 euros), has announced its longlist. Thirty-nine authors from around the globe are nominated. Only one Canadian was up (no, it wasn't Alice Munro) as opposed to fourteen British writers (!). But the nice thing about this award is that they actually make good on the their promise/goal of highlighting up-and-coming authors. On the American side of things, I'm glad to see Benjamin Percy nominated for "Refresh, Refresh," although both Jhumpa Lahiri's "Unaccustomed Earth" and Jim Shepard's "Like You'd Understand, Anyway" are obvious picks. (Tobias Wolff wasn't eligible because "Our Story Begins" collected previously published stories).

I'm also glad to see Nam Le nominated under the Australian category for "The Boat," which is his first book and which comes out this month. Roddy Doyle is up for Ireland, but his latest collection, "The Deportees and Other Stories," is underwhelming. Anne Enright, who won the Man Booker Prize for her novel "The Gathering," is also up under the Irish section, but since I haven't read her collection, "Taking Pictures," I can't pass judgment. If you remember, last year the prize went to Miranda July for "No One Belongs Here More Than You," and the shortlist was quirky, bypassing Alice Munro and favoring writers like the Israeli Edgar Keret. So it seems likely that an up-and-comer has a good chance with this prize.

Deja Reading

Recently, while reading two short story collections -- Jim Shepard's "Like You'd Understand, Anyways" and Tobias Wolff's "Our Story Begins," -- I got the distinct feeling of deja reading. You know, when you come across something and in the first few paragraphs it seems familiar, as if you've read it in another life. When it really is deja reading, and you actually haven't read it before, that's a very bad sign for a book. It's pretty much a stamp of unoriginality. That, or you have some serious deja vu issues. But these were false deja-reading feelings -- I actually had read these stories a few years back when they were originally published in Harper's, The New Yorker, and elsewhere.

Shepard's story "Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead," one of the best short stories ever about football, and Wolff's story "The Deposition," about a lawyer who trails a young girl, both were good on the first read, but on the second one they were so much richer. I think it might be a characteristic peculiar to short stories that they compress so much into a tight space that re-reading is required. Not many novels, barring perhaps classics, reward re-reading with that high of a dividend. If anything, I winced at the hits and laughed at the jokes in "Trample the Weak" even harder than the first time around (there's one joke in which a member of the opposing team says, "You don't tackle very well," so two characters knock him out, and when he regains consciousness, they counter: "You don't stay conscious very well.") Especially with "The Deposition," what I glossed over in the first reading -- a lengthy description of a small dying town, seen through the eyes of a stranger on a stroll -- became a portrait of a place with metaphorical connotations for the rest of the country and for the character.

The best feeling for me, though, isn't deja reading, but jamais reading. Jamais vu is the opposite of deja vu: In deja vu, things seem familiar even though they haven't happened before, while in jamais vu, things seem utterly foreign even though they are extremely familiar. This has happened to me before with my own work: I once wrote a short story, forgot about it for five years, and then happened upon it and re-read it, not even remembering how it ended. It was as if I'd never written or read it. And it was brilliant. The ending surprised and delighted me. There is nothing better than being surprised by a story that you've written -- I mean, I've had plenty of stories that had absolutely sucked when I re-read them a few years later, so it was very nice (and abnormal) to find something that worked.

I've also experienced jamais reading with classics. Once I had the feeling of stumbling over Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" as if I'd never read it before. It was strange -- as if one of my best friends had suddenly transformed into a stranger, the contours of their face unfamiliar, even their name absent from my memory. It was so beautiful to read it as though it were the first time, though. Of course I started to remember as I progressed, but that sense of estrangement felt like an invitation to recapture something so valuable -- a first read. It feels like it's necessary for the writer to cultivate jamais vu, especially poets. To be able to view the familiar with absolute new eyes. I think that's what people read for, and that's what I write for: to discover the new, whether it appears to be familiar or not.   

Jim Shepard Wins Short Story Prize

Jim Shepard won the Short Story Prize last night for his collection "Like You'd Understand, Anyway." First prize was $20,000, and both runners-up took home $5,000. I just finished the book and understand (Yes, I do understand, really) why it won. It has a zest for exploration and a penchant for far-flung corners of the earth (Chernobyl, Hadrian's Wall, space), while balancing these journeys with the ballast of traumatizing relationships. Tessa Hadley, also nominated for the prize for "Sunstroke and Other Stories," wrote quiet stories, heavily psychological, many close to home. I haven't yet read Vincent Lam's collection "Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures," but just from Hadley versus Shepard, I've noticed that prizes in general usually tilt toward the political, heavy-drama, big-themed stories rather than toward more existential narratives, and I think this prize continues to fit into that trend. Which is not to say that Shepard shouldn't have won it - it's an incredible collection.

I've been considering lately what it takes to unite a collection. The way Shepard's collection was marketed was on the basis of its absolute diversity -- the blurb from Kirkus on the jacket reads: "So varied in tone, theme, voice, and setting are these stories that they might've been written by a hydra." When I first read that, before I read the book (which breaks all of my rules about never reading the jacket before reading --doesn't it always spoil the perception of the story?), I thought it exactly counter to most advice about constructing a short story collection. Everyone says to construct it very tightly, theme it as closely as possible, even use some of the same characters in multiple stories. Like two collections I just read: Laila Lalami's "Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits," a collection of stories all about immigration from Morocco, and James Joyce's "Dubliners," which announces its theme in its title.

But once I read the book, I realized that "Like You'd Understand, Anyway" was united just as strongly as many others. Even established writers can't get away with a slapdash arrangement. Shepard's stories are almost always historical and often heavily researched, since they're set in exotic locales or eras. They also involve disasters -- political revolution in France seen through the eyes of an executioner, a massive earthquake and tidal wave in Alaska. Also, there are several expeditions gone wrong, such as a search for the Yeti and a trip into the center of Australia. Although a few stories don't fit into the overall theme, such as "Trample the Dead, Hurdle the Weak," a story about high school football, and "Courtesy for Beginners," which is about summer camp, they evidence the same brio for life, only close to home, rather than in a foreign land.

One last note: While reading "Like You'd Understand, Anyway," I enjoyed two occasions where friends asked me what I was reading. I responded with the title, in a derisive tone. But before they could be really offended, I showed them the cover, laughing.