Short story author Stuart Dybek is among this year’s recipients of MacArthur Foundation grants.
It’s weird. I love short stories. However, I haven’t read much of Dybek’s work. I remember his collection The Coast of Chicago but that’s about it. And of ocurse there’s his great story Death of the Right Fielder. I do recall with great fondness his story, We Didn’t. Off the top of my head, I can’t remember the year. But the story was included in an edition of Best American Short Stories. It was one of the first stories that really started to click for me. I suppose this was in the early to mid nineties and I had gotten over the period of having nightmares about Barry Hannah the night before going into his workshop. Contemporary fiction had started to mean something to me. I started to really be affected by it and to understand why this story was successful and that story wasn’t, at least in one person’s opinion. And I picked up that year’s BASS and there was We Didn’t.
It was one of the first stories that really started to click for me. I suppose this was in the early to mid nineties and I had gotten over the period of having nightmares about Barry Hannah the night before going into his workshop. Contemporary fiction had started to mean something to me. I started to really be affected by it and to understand why this story was successful and that story wasn’t, at least in one person’s opinion. And I picked up that year’s and there was .So congratulations to Stuart Dybek. I’m going to pull that copy of BASS off the shelf and re-read that story tonight.
[From Ed]
yeah, “We Didn’t” worked the exact same for me. really, it and Carver’s “A Small, Good Thing” were the two that kind of clicked together for me. and Thom Jones was in there somewhere too, I think. Wolff swirling around. all magic, all perfect, all right then.