Comments on: essays and short stories in the New Yorker and "Best American" series

essays and short stories in the New Yorker and "Best American" series

stbalbach — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:40:15 -0800

Here are the essays and short stories originally published in The New Yorker that were later collected in Houghton Mifflin's annual "Best American" anthology series (1915-present).

Some of the later ones are freely available online, all are in the Complete New Yorker collection (it's a sort of best-of guide to the archive).

By: gwint

gwint — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:55:22 -0800

Like I have time for this?! I haven't even finished reading the Internet yet. (but thanks)

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:07:22 -0800

Too bad there are no essays linked before 1999 or no short stories linked before 2003 (and none for 2005-07). I guess they really want you to buy that New Yorker hard drive instead.

By: KokuRyu

KokuRyu — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:24:42 -0800

Remember those Peanuts cartoons, "Hapiness Is..."? Well, for me, happiness is reading a New Yorker non-fiction piece, a page of wall-to-wall words, and glancing over to the next page to see if what I'm reading is going to end soon. Happiness is seeing yet another page (and hopefully another page after that) of text.

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:15:13 -0800

The longest piece in recent memory is this profile of Bill Clinton (22 pages on their website). I had to eat like three meals in the process of reading it.

By: Rashomon

Rashomon — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:51:49 -0800

Name that Tone is a good one. It's about the cell-phone ring tone that can't be heard by most people over the age of twenty.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:26:44 -0800

"Old Boys, Old Girls" by Edward P. Jones is pretty damn good, it's about a DC thug who goes to jail. Almost anthropological and completely non-stereotypical. Jones of course grew up poor black in DC. The underlying message is little things happen to us that change the direction of our lives and we don't notice or even remember so we get stuck in ruts unable to figure out how we ended up the way we are. This story is also in his collection All Aunt Hagar's Children and is the better of the bunch IMO.

By: roombythelake

roombythelake — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:38:04 -0800

I'm with gwint. I'm about a month behind on reading the New Yorker right now, so when I found emdashes a few weeks back, I thought, wow, cool site, but I can't read it unless I've read each week's issue first, for fear of ruining something in it. And now you show me this. I'll never catch up... Thanks for the links!