This Is My Best

Somewhere along life’s way I managed to acquire the 1180 page compilation of stories called This Is My Best in which Dial Press assembled over 150 self-chosen masterpieces by 93 of America’s greatest living authors. Published in 1942, the book is as interesting for its choices regarding authors as for the authors’ own decisions regarding their work.

The book not only has stories, there are also essays, drama, poems, history, reportage and profiles. Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, H. L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker – these are names one might expect to see here.

Upton Sinclair offered up a selection from his novel The Jungle, with these sentences as introduction. “Anyone who reads these five thousand words will have his imagination stimulated, his sympathies widened, and his understanding of the world he lives in increased. At least, that is why the book (from which this excerpt was taken) was written, and it doesn’t happen there is something wrong with either you or with the author.”

There were surprises in the list though. Steven Vincent Benet, for example, who here offers The Devil & Daniel Webster. For some reason I’d associated him with the post-Civil War period of the previous century.

The book is a good reminder that American prose had more breadth and depth than just the big names of Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Papa Hemingway. I have always found books like these to be useful for ferreting out new territories to explore, hence the large number of anthologies on my book shelf.

The down side of all this good literature is that one becomes aware there’s just too much to read and not enough time.

As a short story writer myself, I find the short form exhilarating. But there’s not enough “public” to really motivate publishers to produce the works of unknowns. It’s a celebrity culture, so mags that pay money want a name on the cover that will lead to sales. Unknowns don’t have the clout.
For the record, Hemingway selected “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Mencken selected his autobiographical “The Days of the Giants.” Dreiser chose “The Hand.” Katherine Anne Porter gave us “Flowering Judas.”

Steinbeck was indifferent as to what was selected from his body of work, an attitude I understand. Every piece has been crafted with the highest aims in mind, and either reflects this or one doesn't attach one's name to it.

As for me, I’m hoping you’ll read everything I write, but I know you don’t have time. So I’ll point you to a story and a poem. The story is long, the poem short, and both hopefully entertaining while thought provoking. And if I'm lucky you'll rejoin me here on my blog again tomorrow.