Short Stories by William Gay

There's a rumor that Barnes & Noble will absorb our local Border's, and you know, I hope it's true. I have valiantly tried over the years to support my local bookstores (independent and chain -- they all deserve our patronage), but so many times when I've gone into Border's to pick up a book, they haven't had it. Same was true a few days ago, when I'd hoped to buy the 2008 O. Henry Prize Stories. Nada one on the shelf.

They didn't have the 2008 Best American Short Stories, either, so I picked up the 2007 version, altogether grumpy about the situation and determined not to like anything in it. But guess what? There's a story by William Gay, "Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You?" that I can't wait to read. Gay wrote my favorite short story, "The Paperhanger," which was an O. Henry winner in 2001. (This story is so dog-eared and highlighted, it's falling out of my book.) If you haven't read it and can't find it, zip me an email and I'll send you a copy. I'll warn you, it's dark. But oh so delicious.

Flannery O'Connor Makes Dirt Sound Good

Flannery O'Connor's "A View of the Woods" is a short story so delicious, it rivals William's Gay's "The Paperhanger." Here is how she handles the description of a grandfather and his granddaughter sitting on the bumper of his car while watching a machine lift out dirt and throw it in a pile:

"Any fool that would let a cow pasture interfere with progress is not on my books," he had said to Mary Fortune several times from his seat on the bumper, but the child did not have eyes for anything but the machine. She sat on the hood, looking down into the red pit, watching the big disembodied gullet gorge itself on the clay, then, with the sound of a deep sustained nausea and a slow mechanical revulsion, turn and spit it up. Her pale eyes behind her spectacles followed the repeated motion of it again and again and her face -- a small replica of the old man's -- never lost its look of complete absorption."

You can find Ms. O'Connor's story in her collection EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE. Run and fetch it, quick!