Burn After Submitting

Bret Anthony Johnston’s new short story collection arrived today. That is the inspiration for dusting off Burn After Submitting. I have too many distractions. Not too many distractions to read, but too many distractions to write about reading. Although I miss it. I miss reading a short story per day and scribbling about what the story had to say, what happened the day I read the story.

This past weekend I found myself standing in the library holding an Oscar Ballot because our small town gives out a prize basket for whomever guesses the most Oscar winners. (My daughter wins every year.) One of my neighbors was standing at the check out desk when she asked me a question. I noticed on the counter a copy of Arcadia by Lauren Groff. I said, “Lauren Groff.” “I’m returning it,” she said. “A couple years ago I read this really great story by her.” “I have her new story collection. I could drop it in your mailbox.” Then I felt sad because we don’t just go up to the door and knock. When I was a kid people were always knocking on our door. I said, “That’s ok.” She said, “What was the story?” “I can’t remember the title. I’ll text you.” Then we spoke about our kids for a while before she left. Then the librarian and I spoke about our Oscar picks until someone came up to check out a book.

For the next two days, I thought about all the journals I filled in 2023 with stories and the events of the days surrounding the stories. I thought, maybe I should I should go through all the journals and find all my favorite stories and read them again. I know the Lauren Groff story was one of the best.

I finally remembered the name and sent a text to my neighbor and in the text I put a link to the story and I told her how it was a really good story because it is a really good story. As I put my phone away, I thought again how I should return to Burn After Submitting.

Then I was reading a magazine where I learned that Bret Anthony Johnston had published a new story collection a month ago. How did I miss it? How can one of your favorite short story writers publish a story collection and it go unnoticed. So often I hear about a book too soon and by the time it comes out I’ve lost interest.

When Bret Anthony Johnston’s book arrived I opened to the table of contents. Partly searching for a certain story. Hoping it has been included. One of my favorite stories. A story I printed off the internet and read several times. I was struck by the table of contents. How much time has passed in the writing of these stories. The decades it takes to accumulate a truly great collection of stories—and I haven’t even read it yet.

Just from glancing at the table of contents I can see that three of the stories included In Encounters with Unexpected Animals were included in Best American Stories. Also, the story I consider a favorite, won a nice award. Awards are weird so they play little in my estimation but he is the kind of writer people like to reward. But he is also very patient as testified by the length of time he spent between stories.

If I remember right, and I’m not going to bother going to my office to double check, even though it would be very easy to, because I am downstairs with a Swedish movie playing in the background as I write this, Michael Chabon collected Soldier of Fortune in his edited Best American Stories. Which means that was over twenty years ago. I can still see the yellow cover. I forget who selected Encounters with Unexpected Animals, but that made it into the BASS. Must have been ten years ago, at least. This year his story Time of the Preacher was collected. My favorite of the stories probably won the award sevenish years ago.

His debut story collection came out in the late-90s. Titled Corpus Christi. A town on the gulf coast of test. Also, Christ’s Body.

Almost thirty years between story collections. I don’t know how old he was when he published Corpus Christi. I don’t know how much older he is than me. (I try to forget the fact that he has recently published a few novels.) I think the story is God’s work. Novels are fine, but in the long run, who really cares. Stories are what separate us from the beasts of the field.

In the movie Smoke by Paul Auster, William Hurt tells a long story about a revolution that ends with a man rolling cigarettes with the pages of a book. William Hurt’s character asks the single most important question: “What’s better a good book or a good smoke?” He doesn’t ask which is better: a good story or a good smoke.