All the dumb clichés that are maybe true this time

Best American Short Stories drops at midnight. I'll be back to analyzing it this year, as it's pretty much the highlight of whatever it is I do on this blog. Each BASS comes with a foreword by the editor and guest editor, which I usually ignore. It's always about how things are dire in the world and how it's a miracle that art like BASS continues to survive and how critical art is in these dark times. 

Since the first election of Trump in 2016, I've not been a fan of two trends among liberals. One is the tendency to over-catastrophize. The election of the stupidest man ever to hold the highest office is calamity enough without looking for extra reasons to find it terrifying. The second is the refusal of liberals to acknowledge their own part in creating the monster of Trump. The result is that I've spent the last 8 years loathing the fact that Trump ever got past eleventh place in the primaries on one hand, and chiding fellow liberals on the other for finding a Trump conspiracy under every bottle of ketchup on the other. Those BASS forewords sometimes trip both of those triggers of mine.

Nonetheless, it does look like somehow, my fellow countrymates are going to elect him again in two weeks, and this time, not feeling any need to surround himself with grownups in order to make himself look like a real politician, Trump is going to feel free to do whatever dumb thing pops into his head. Meanwhile, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are all feeling bolder to do whatever they want to do, because they doubt the strength, resolve, and ability of what has been the world order to do anything about it. It really feels like Trump will be elected, he will force Ukraine to take a terrible deal or be conquered outright, and what has been called the liberal world order will officially come to an end. In its place will be a much more frightening world. 

In the 90s, it seemed to me at one point like in a mere twenty years or so, the world would have all its major problems solved. It now feels the opposite of that, like some kind of definitive doom is imminent, and only unlikely chance can prevent it. 

That's the environment in which I approach an attempt to seriously read twenty short stories that represent the best of what American letters produced in 2023. In the middle of the greatest angst I've felt since I was a kid thinking about nuclear fallout, I'm going to put all of my effort into reading, thinking about, and communicating my thoughts about twenty short made-up stories. It's a hugely frivolous thing to do, and it's also the only thing I can think of to do. 

There's never a time when there aren't more useful things to do than write or read or think about literature. We could always be feeding the poor or righting a wrong or curing a disease, but we read anyway. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing in the human race, but I know it's in our nature. So if we're going to do it anyway, we may as well try to do it well. So for the next several weeks, I'll be neck-deep in trying to do the least fuzzy-headed readings I can do, readings that are hopefully what the authors who wrote these stories deserved.