I guess I'm being fair to this mediocre Covid story: "The Honor of Your Presence" by Dave Eggers (O.Henry anthology)

It's taken me a while to post on the next entry in the 2024 Best Short Stories collection, mostly because I wasn't sure I was being fair to it. It's got a couple of triggers that tend to set me off. It's long--like either a really long short story or a kind of short novella. It's by a big name that even I recognize, although I don't make any effort to know who the big figures in fiction are. So in order to justify its length that it took up first in One Story and then in this anthology, it ought to be good, or else I'm going to assume it's there because of the pedigree of the author and not the strength of the story. I was pretty sure it was a kind of mediocre story about human connections with Covid-19 as a backdrop, but I wanted to sit on it a while to make sure it wasn't my own biases. After taking a little extra time to think it over, I'm pretty sure this is what it seemed to me. I don't like making these posts primarily reviews instead of focusing on analysis, but sometimes, a story just doesn't grab me as being worth the trouble of analysis, and then I kind of need to revert to a review to explain why. 

I don't usually spend time reading what other people have said about a story, but I really wanted to see if someone else could convince me I was wrong, and since the story was published as its own book (which should tell you something about how long it is for a short story), there are a lot of comments about it in Goodreads. I indulged a few. I think Dann LaGratta pretty much hit the nail on the head: "The synopsis promises a 'meditation on why humans congregate and celebrate,' but the vibe just feels very much like it was written during the Covid shutdown and just kind of thrown out there." LaGratta is now my favorite Goodreads commentator. He even abuses the word "just" like I tend to. 

That's the story in a nutshell. If this were a story by a writing student you were talking about in a workshop, you'd say it was pretty good, but as a long story that took a spot in one of the top journals and then also took a spot in one of the best anthologies, it better justify itself, and it doesn't. It's about Helen, who organizes events but doesn't like to go to them, and her wacky uncle Peter, a bon vivant who sometimes pretends to be more British than he is and who loves gatherings. He pushes her to put herself out there and she eventually meets someone who helps her remember that human connections can be good. 

Peter delivers the story's core line, commenting on the development humans are going through during the pandemic: "We're experimenting. We're emerging, and no one cares, and everyone understands." It's a kind of sweet line, and it does encapsulate one truth of the pandemic--although a truth that definitely ought to be balanced against other, darker ones. It's a truth that takes a long damn time to arrive at, though, and the characters aren't quite wacky and enjoyable enough that I was glad to be on the ride for so long. 

Look, Eggers is apparently a great guy who's done wonderful things to support writers, so this isn't about hate. But I wish journals and anthologies wouldn't give away the precious few spots they have available for what amounts to lifetime achievement awards. I'm sure One Story had a hundred better stories with more urgent truths to tell that it rejected because the writer was a nobody. 

Anyhow, since there's not much to dig into here, and not much of a layer below the one that appears to most readers, I'll move on to the next story.