The written word grows in meaning with every reading and rereading. No two people ever understand language in exactly the same way. Even simple one-word assertions like yes or no might have dozens of possible meanings.
Having come this far in my fractured, and necessarily incomplete, interpretation of the process of reading, it occurred to me what was most interesting about the BANR project: that is, the two processes of the young editors who gathered together the contents of this aspect of the Best American series.
First, it intrigued and impressed me that these readers could come together and agree on fragments, stories, and essays that they all saw somewhat differently. Maybe one editor thought that an idea presented was fascinating or important where another reader saw something exhilarating in the style of writing. A third contributor didn’t understand what was being said and a fourth had issues with the author’s implied opinions about gender. They all came together in a room in San Francisco and danced around and around the language and ideas celebrating, classifying, considering, and finally agreeing upon what would make the final cut and what would not.
This process alone I would find extremely daunting. A long time ago, in 1965, the Lovin’ Spoonful released a pop song called “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?” It was a tune about a young man who, again and again, found that he was in love with two women but had to decide on one. I always felt that this was a central challenge in life and that I have never, or at least rarely, been up to the task. That is why I shy away from editing jobs: there’s just too much to love.
Never just the question of better or the best, the outcome of editing is, rather, the ecstasy of being in tune with something and the heartbreak of turning away from other beauty.
But as much as I am impressed with the job of deciding, it is the other fundamental step in this process that arrests me. Reading is good enough but rereading is sublime. In the mad rush of our modern “scientistic” world people often tell me that they read some iconic piece of literature like Man’s Fate, Dead Souls, or One Hundred Years of Solitude. I have taken to asking the person making this claim to literacy how many times they read the document. Usually, I get a quizzical stare and then the claim, “One very close reading.”
But “Once is never enough,” to quote another pop song: “Do That to Me One More Time” by The Captain and Tennille, this time from 1979.
You don’t propose marriage after one date. You don’t decide on a career after one article or class session. You don’t cast your vote based on one opinion of the candidate in question. Stories, essays, novels, and memoirs all deserve to be, indeed have to be read multiple times. Every writer worth his or her salt knows that writing is rewriting. Every reader should know the same thing about understanding text: that is, real reading is rereading.
The editors of this book by example and for the love of writing have shown us in the words represented here that they have read and reread and reread again the ocean of words that we are about to embark upon. They, the editors, will have gotten more from this process than most readers in the modern world. It is the work of editing, of going over every word and then discussing those words and then diving back in again that makes real readers.
So what is the best? A group of young scholars that has taken to heart the task of deepening their own minds in order to present to us a world that is at once known and hidden. They have examined and reexamined linguistic interpretations of the world we live in and so have become curators of our culture by the lovely example of making impossible choices.
WALTER MOSLEY
I
Best American Front Section
EVERY YEAR, the BANR committee comes across extraordinary work that does not fit in the main section of the book. The committee collects this work and publishes it here, in the Best American Front Section. You will love it so much.
Best American American Poem
SHERMAN ALEXIE
FROM Tin House
Sherman Alexie is the author of over twenty-two books, including The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which won the National Book Award. Last year, the Front Section began with Alexie’s "Sonnet, with Vengeance.” This year, it begins with the following poem, which appeared in issue 52 of Tin House.
Crazy Horse Boulevard
1.
During his lifetime, my big brother has chosen and been chosen by six best friends.
Five of them have died in car wrecks.
In Indian theology, there are Four Directions: east, west, north, and south. Sounds expansive, I guess, but it’s really limited. What if I walked south for ten feet and then suddenly turned west and walked for two thousand miles? How would one theologically measure the difference between those two paths? Would those two thousand miles west be more sacred than those ten feet south? And what if I walked in a northwestern direction? Come on, come on, people, there are a hell of a lot more than four directions, even in a metaphorical sense.
And, really, there are maybe three Indians in the whole country who can say, “the Four Directions,” without secretly giggling.
That might be only the second time that somebody has put “Indians” and “giggling” in the same sentence.
I’ve only been to one funeral for one of my brother’s best friends. It was a highly traditional ceremony, so the mournful Indians spent a lot of time giggling.
2.
What if one is not the loneliest number?
What if two is actually the loneliest number? After all, how many times have you had your heart truly broken by a large group of people? You really have to be most wary of the other half of the couples you’ve created. Or been born into.
My friend says she’s only been in romantic love three times. My other friend says he falls in love three times during his commute to work.
At the present moment, I have four dollars in my wallet. What if this were my only wealth? At times in my younger life, my entire wealth was less than four dollars. When it comes to love, is there a difference between four dollars and four million dollars? What did Lear say to his daughter Cordelia, who truly loved him, but was too tongue-tied to say anything other than “nothing” when he asked her what praise she had for him? He said, “Nothing comes from nothing.” That fucker Lear disinherited his daughter because she was less articulate than her sisters. How’s that for love?
I’ve served on the board of trustees for five different charitable organizations. I’ve lost count of the number of times a rich person would only give money if his or her name was publicly printed in bold type. Rich people want buildings to be named after them. Rich people want cities to be named for them. I think the saddest people in the world are rich. Maybe one billion is the loneliest number.
I worry that my big brother will soon lose the sixth best friend of his lifetime. I worry that my brother will outlive everybody. I worry that he’ll be the last person on earth and spend his life wandering among innumerable gravestones. And I’ve just decided that the only structure that should bear anybody’s name is a gravestone.
3.
I bet you all the money in my wallet that my brother is carrying about six dollars in his pocket. That would, indeed, be his entire wealth.
I love my big brother. I love my big brother. I love my big brother. I love my big brother. I love my big brother.
The fourth word in my copy of Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary(which I received in 1985 as a high school graduation gift from the Franson family) is aardwolf, a maned, striped mammal of southern and eastern Africa that resembles the related hyenas and feeds chiefly on carrion and insects. Have you ever heard of the aardwolf? It sounds like some mythical creature straight out of Dungeons & Dragons. I’m afraid to search for more information about the thing, though, because I’m sure it’s extinct. One can’t talk about Indians and death and genocide without magically discovering other dead and dying species.
Okay, I wait about three minutes before I type “aardwolf” into my search engine
. And, hooray, the aardwolf is still alive! Though it’s the only surviving species of the subfamily Protelinae (whatever that is). And what’s more, this animal is a genocidal eater. According to Wiki-pedia, the aardwolf feeds mainly on termites and can eat more than 200,000 in a single night. Holy shit! Right now, in Africa, there’s a termite shaman telling his people, “The aardwolf comes at us from every fucking direction.”
It was around closing time, 2 a.m., when I saw Gail Franson in a grocery store in Spokane. This was maybe two years after I graduated from high school. Gail was a few years older, my big brother’s age, and I’d always had a mad crush on her. And there she was. “Hey, that’s Gail,” I said to my big brother, who was stealing and eating food from the fruit department. He didn’t care. But I shouted, “Hey, Gail, I love you! You have great legs!” She blushed and turned away. It probably doesn’t surprise you that I haven’t seen her since that moment. And, oh, just to remind you: it was Gail’s family who gave me that dictionary as a graduation present. What does it say about me that I’ve kept this outmoded dictionary for twenty-seven years?
Like my big brother, I have also had six best friends in my life. All of them are still alive, though I only have contact with two of them.
4.
Who are the six greatest human beings who have ever lived? I bet you that most men would list six other men. And most women would list three women and three men.
Off the top of my head: Crazy Horse. Martin Luther King Jr. Michelangelo. Emily Dickinson. The person who invented the smallpox vaccine. That’s five. I’ll leave the last spot open because I’m sure I’ve forgotten somebody obvious. Four men and one woman. What does that say about me? Of course, I’m just assuming the inventor of the smallpox vaccine is a man. Isn’t that sexist? Well, I look it up and discover that Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine in 1796. What? Do you know how many Indians died from smallpox after 1796? Millions! Just when you think the United States couldn’t have been more genocidal, you discover more evidence.
I’m guessing there are four kids in each of my sons’ classes who haven’t been immunized against whooping cough, diphtheria, and polio. If my sons, Indian as they are, contract whooping cough, diphtheria, or polio from those organic, free-range white children and die, will it be legal for me to scalp and slaughter their white parents?
Three arrows: one in the head, one in the heart, and one in the crotch.
Two thoughts: Is there such a thing as Crazy Horse Boulevard? And if so, have white people built big houses there? In Seattle, when white folks first gentrified this neighborhood, they built big houses on Martin Luther King Jr. Way, but they turned the front doors of their homes so their street addresses would not be on MLK Jr. Way.
Among my immediate family, I’m the only one who doesn’t live on the reservation. What does that say about me?
5.
Aardvark is the first word in my ancient dictionary. But aardwolf is a far more interesting word, animal, and concept. That’s how poems get written.
Last week, my sister sent me two questions from her final exam in Native American Literature 101. Yes, my sister is studying my books in her class. And yes, she’s unsure of the answers. I don’t even want to think about the ramifications of this. Sometimes the poem doesn’t need to be written.
Three ironies: I just included the discussion of what should be unwritten in this poem. Most of the people who read this poem will be white people. This poem doesn’t use any form of rhyme or meter, so it’s called a prose poem. It’s called free verse. Yes, an Indian is using free verse to write about that rural concentration camp known as a reservation.
Okay, I think that was four ironies.
My big brother has helped carry five coffins from hearse to longhouse, longhouse back to hearse, hearse to graveside, and graveside to grave.
Here’s a game: Grab a six-sided die. No, roll one red die and one white die together. Read the red die first and refer to the corresponding section of this poem; then read the white die and refer to the corresponding stanza of each numbered section. For example, if you rolled a red 4 and a white 6, you’d be reading this stanza. Now, roll the dice thirty-six times and reorder this poem. Do this as many times as you wish. No matter what happens, remember that my big brother, though he may not admit it, fully expects to bury his sixth best friend in the very near future.
6.
In the first six drafts of this poem, I placed the previous stanza at the end of the poem. But, for some ineffable reason, I decided that it wasn’t correct. But who knows? When you write by instinct, you’re going to get a whole lot of shit wrong.
We all live by instinct. We all live by instinct. We all live by instinct. We all live by instinct. We all live by instinct.
Ineffable. Ineffable. Ineffable. Ineffable.
My big brother’s holy trinity: beer, pizza, and death songs.
Ah, big brother, when was the last time you and I sang together? What happened to our duet?
I’ve only got one birthmark. It’s a heart-shaped mole on my right arm. It’s next to a comet-shaped burn scar. What does this say about me?
Best American Term Paper Assignment
FROM Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield
Kurt Vonnegut taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop from 1965–1967. Vonnegut once suggested that he thought the students at the workshop were merely learning to play practical jokes. “If you make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper,” he said in an interview with The Paris Review, “what is that but a practical joke?” The following is a term paper assignment Vonnegut gave to his Form of Fiction class at the workshop. At the end of the assignment, Vonnegut signs as “Polonious,” alluding to King Claudius’s unreliable counselor in Hamlet.
FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT
November 30, 1965
Beloved:
This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”
As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all . . . ”
I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short Story(W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as little children . . . ”
Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some stories better than others.
Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be submitted to a wise, respected, witty, and world-weary superior.
Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.
Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blin
d or kill somebody, about twenty pages from each of you should do neatly. Do not bubble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.
poloniøus