Prize Stories 1988.

Prize Stories 1988, edited by William Abrahams (Doubleday, 312 pp., SIZ95)

THIS VOLUME is the 68th in the O. Henry Memorial Award series," the publisher tells us; as usual, William Abrahams, co- or sole editor for the past 24 years, has done a creditable job. The 158 magazines he consulted are listed in the back, and there are no glaring omissions. Mr. Abrahams has included selections from most of the writers of some reputation who regularly write stories, to wit: Raymond Carver, Alice Adams, Andre Dubus, Joyce Carol Oates, Joy Williams, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ann Beattie, John Sayles, and John Updike; there are also seven by less-wellknown names, and four by writers previously unpublished. The magazines in which the stories first appeared include, among the old guard, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Southern Review; among the newer, Quarterly and Grand Street. Taken together, therefore, the selections cover the range and type of stories considered at present by American editors and critics to have literary merit.

Unlike Mr. Abrahams, however, I do not find these selections (nor indeed, in my perusals of many of these same magazines, have I found their other fiction) to be exhilarating and confirmatory of the ongoing vitality, diversity, excellence, etc. of the American short story, nor do I perceive the enormous debt that genre supposedly owes (according to Mr. Abrahams's introduction) to Chekhov. Instead, I am struck by pages and pages of trickery, superficiality, and coldness.

Part of the problem seems to be that, more than ever, stories and their authors are being "sold" by the editors as part of their overall concept of their magazines-this is a New Yorker story, this an Atlantic, this a Paris Review, this a Grand Street-while contributors seem almost to write for a particular magazine, so perfectly do their stories match the overtly commissioned contributions. Of course, to a certain extent, this has always been so; in nineteenth-century France, England, and Russia, as well as during the Twenties in the United States, tailormade stories constituted the majority even of those aspiring to be recognized as literature. Realistically, therefore, one does not expect from a book such as Prize Stories more than one or two exceptions to the iron rule of conformity, In this case, I found four.

Shirley Hazzard has written some very fine things-above all, The Evening of the Holiday, a short novel publisbed in 1965, which captures a variety of romantic sexual passions with exquisite and excruciating exactitude. Miss Hazzard has not published much in the past few years, and to find her represented in the volume at hand was very welcome; unfortunately, her contribution, "The Place to Be," is a disappointment. It is an elaborate historical recreation of post-World War 11 Hong Kong, with the story revolving around an Australian officer's recovery of hope and self-respect after the ordeal of the war. Miss Hazzard's intelligence and sophistication are certainly displayed here, but the story nevertheless lacks an emotional center. The male protagonist remains out of focus, as does the setting, despite the dense accumulation of physical and social detail. Only once in this long story does Miss Hazzard demonstrate the passion without which literature is impossible.

John Updike's appearance, on the other hand, strikes one as inevitable. For over thirty years he has been steadily productive and esteemed, and shows no sign of slowing down. "Leaf Season" is entirely characteristic of his work, in its elegance of diction, narrative prowess, and motif of betrayal. The problem with the story, however, is also characteristic: Mr. Updike's conviction that adult life is a cheat. The result is that "Leaf Season," like so much of his work, appears both emotionally and aesthetically formulaic. In this story, amidst the seemingly healthy normality of a group of couples and their children meeting in a Vermont house for a fall weekend that has become an annual event, we quickly discover that almost every spouse has been unfaithful and will be again, a dark "truth" that is constantly breaking through the smiling, pretty surfaces Mr. Updike describes so well. Those few characters whose private thoughts the author opens up to us express an infantile longing-typical of Mr. Updike's characters-to be a kid again, to be nurtured without being conscious of obligation, to go back to a time when fecklessness was socially acceptable.

Elizabeth Spencer, a less-well-known writer, provides the most enjoyable story in the collection; its subject is the complex reaction of a group of Southerners to a dry-cleaning business undertaken by one of their number in partnership with a black Vietnam veteran. There are many deft sketches of distinctive characters such as the independent young woman, living with her widowed mother, who dares to test the professions of the modern, post-racist South, and the stubborn black man who conceives it his duty to stand by her as they are each put under pressure by their respective communities.

"Errand," by the late Raymond Carver, is billed by Mr. Abrahams as revealing a non-minimalist side to Mr. Carver's work in addition to being a notable achievement in its own right. "Errand" consists of some well-known facts, presented in anecdotal form, concerning the illness and death of Anton Chekhov. And the story does indeed bring Chekhov himself before the reader as a gallant, charming, and humorous figure, while reminding us that the details of Chekhov's death bear a striking resemblance to a Chekhov story-lacking only the faint note of self-mockery that is always lurking in the genuine article-as if Pushkin had done a little editing. The only strictly non-factual contribution Mr. Carver offers is a description of a young waiter who may or may not have a real-life original, and the commissioning of this man by Chekhov's wife to fetch an undertaker for her husband's corpse. And what does this invention add? Not much-just a little more time for the reader to contemplate the nature of the dead man and the quality of his work.

And, finally, what does "Errand" say about Mr. Carver? Only that he was capable of venerating a great man and of respecting a good story, and that perhaps (who can blame him?) he wished some of Chekhov's extraordinary character and artistry had rubbed off on him.