The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Editors’ Note

  Introduction

  MATTHEW SCHULTZ On the Study of Physics in Preschool Classrooms: Pedagogy and Lesson Planning

  DAN KEANE AP Style

  NATHANIEL RICH The Man Who Saves You from Yourself

  KAREN MANER Hugo

  YASMINE EL RASHIDI An Interview with Mona Eltahawy

  MATTHEW DICKMAN Three Poems

  AMOZ OZ Two Women

  JANINE DI GIOVANNI Seven Days in Syria

  ANDERS NILSEN Rage of Poseidon

  LALLY KATZ 15-Second Android

  KYLE G. DARGAN The Robots Are Coming

  ANDREW FOSTER ALTSCHUL Embarazada

  LUKE MOGELSON The Dream Boat

  LUCIE BROCK-BROIDO Two Poems

  A. T. GRANT The Body

  ALI LIEBEGOTT Shift #6

  KATHRYN DAVIS Body-without-Soul

  JOSEPH FINK AND JEFFREY CRANOR Episode 15: Street Cleaning Day

  YUMI SAKUGAWA Have Cake and Tea with Your Demons

  REBECCA RUKEYSER The Chinese Barracks

  RACHEL KAADZI GHANSAH If He Hollers Let Him Go

  REGGIE WATTS Cat n Leo

  GABRIEL HELLER After Work

  THOMAS PIERCE The Real Alan Gass

  V. V. GANESHANANTHAN K Becomes K

  COLE BECHER Charybdis

  RACHEL SWIRSKY If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love

  MAIA MORGAN The Saltwater Twin

  ADAM JOHNSON Nirvana

  SLYVAN OSWALD Little Thing

  ZADIE SMITH Joy

  NICK STURM I Feel YES

  Contributors’ Notes

  The Best American Nonrequired Reading Committee

  Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2013

  About 826 National

  ScholarMatch

  Read More from The Best American Series®

  About the Editors

  Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

  Editor’s Note copyright © 2014 by Daniel Handler and Daniel Gumbiner

  Introduction copyright © 2014 by Lemony Snicket

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  The Best American Series is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  The Best American Nonrequired Reading is a trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not authorized to grant permission for further uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this book without the permission of their owners. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein. Address requests for permission to make copies of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt material to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  ISSN: 1539-316x

  ISBN: 978-0-544-12966-5

  eISBN 978-0-544-12998-6

  v1.0914

  “Embarazada” by Andrew Foster Altschul. First published in Ploughshares, Winter 2013–2014. Copyright © 2013 by Andrew Foster Altschul. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Charybdis” by Cole Becher. First published in The Iowa Review, Spring 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Cole Becher. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “You Have Harnessed Yourself Ridiculously to This World” and “Currying the Fallow-Colored Horse” by Lucie Brock-Broido. First published in Stay, Illusion. Copyright © 2013 by Lucie Brock-Broido. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf.

  “The Robots Are Coming” by Kyle G. Dargan. First published in The Baffler, no. 22, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Kyle G. Dargan.

  “Body-without-Soul” by Kathryn Davis. First published in Duplex, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Kathryn Davis. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press.

  “Greencastle,” “Nobleboro,” and “Sidewalk Poem” by Matthew Dickman. First published in Wish You Were Here, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Matthew Dickman. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Seven Days in Syria” by Janine di Giovanni. First published in Granta, Winter 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Janine di Giovanni. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Mona Eltahawy with Yasmine El Rashidi” by Yasmine El Rashidi. First published in Bidoun, Spring 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Yasmine El Rashidi. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Episode 15: Street Cleaning Day” by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. First released as part of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale. Copyright © 2013 by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. Reprinted by permission of Writers House.

  “K Becomes K” by V. V. Ganeshananthan. First published in Ploughshares, Fall 2013. Copyright © 2013 by V. V. Ganeshananthan. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “If He Hollers Let Him Go” by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah. First published in The Believer, October 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Body” by A. T. Grant. First Published in Collected Alex, June 2013. Copyright © 2013 by A. T. Grant. Reprinted by permission of A. T. Grant.

  “After Work” by Gabriel Heller. First published in Fence, Summer 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Gabriel Heller. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Nirvana” by Adam Johnson. First published in Esquire, August 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Adam Johnson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “15-Second Android” by Lally Katz. First published in 15-Second Plays, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Lally Katz. Reprinted by permission of Ugly Duckling Presse.

  “AP Style” by Dan Keane. First published in Zoetrope, Spring 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Dan Keane. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

  “Shift #6” by Ali Liebegott. First published in Shifts, November 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Ali Liebegott. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Hugo” by Karen Maner. First published in The Colorado Review, Summer 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Karen Maner. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Dream Boat” by Luke Mogelson. First published in The New York Times Magazine, November 15, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Luke Mogelson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Saltwater Twin” by Maia Morgan. First published in Creative Nonfiction, Summer 2013. Copyright © 2014 by Maia Morgan. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Rage of Poseidon” by Anders Nilsen. First published in Rage of Poseidon, 2013. Copyright © 2014 by Anders Nilsen. Reprinted by permission of Drawn and Quarterly.

  “Little Thing” by Sylvan Oswald. First published in 15-Second Plays, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Sylvan Oswald. Reprinted by permission of Ugly Duck Presse.

  “Two Women” by Amos Oz. First published in Between Friends. Copyright © 2013 by Amos Oz. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

  “The Real Alan Gass” by Thomas Pierce. First published in Subtropics, issue 15, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Thomas Pierce. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Man Who Saves You from Yourself” by Nathaniel Rich. First published in Harper’s Magazine, November 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Nathaniel Rich. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Chinese Barracks” by Rebecca Rukeyser. First published in ZYZZYVA, Spring/Summer 2013
. Copyright © 2013 by Rebecca Rukeyser. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Have Cake and Tea with Your Demons” by Yumi Sakugawa. First published in Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the Universe. Copyright © 2013 by Yumi Sakugawa. Reprinted by permission of Adams Media, an F+W Media, Inc. Co. All rights reserved.

  “On the Study of Physics in Preschool Classrooms” by Matthew Schultz. First published in Ecotone, issue 16, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Matthew Schultz. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Joy” by Zadie Smith. First published in The New York Review of Books, January 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Zadie Smith. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “I Feel YES” by Nick Sturm. First published as I Feel YES, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Nick Sturm. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” by Rachel Swirsky. First published in Apex Magazine, March 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Rachel Swirsky. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Cat N Leo” by Reggie Watts. First published in 15-Second Plays, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Reggie Watts. Reprinted by permission of Ugly Duckling Presse.

  Editors’ Note

  Dear Person Who Doesn’t Skip Editors’ Notes at the Beginnings of Books,

  Hello. Welcome to The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014, a collection of journalism, fiction, poetry, comics, stage plays, interviews, and podcast transcripts culled from a mountain of material that was published, posted, or otherwise presented over the previous year. While you were likely wasting your time, a dedicated team of individuals went through this material and gathered together their favorite things.

  Who is this team? They are high school students from the San Francisco Bay Area. Some are seniors and some are freshmen. Some go to public school and some to private school. Some talk a lot and some need to be prodded. Some of them believe in aliens and some of them do not. It is irrelevant and perhaps inappropriate to dwell on their physical characteristics, but suffice to say that they are, for the most part, a very good-looking bunch.

  They are also good at reading. The team gathered every week, reading two or three pieces during the first, silent hour—an assortment of famed journals and unknown periodicals, popular websites and obscure chapbooks. And then, in the second, more interesting hour, they leapt into discussion with careful thought, heated debate, and diverse and startling opinion. Provocative cheese philosophies were bandied about. Revolutions were subject to raised fists and rolled eyes. There were no fixed criteria and no rules—except for the “no-projectile-launching-of-boba-tea rule,” which had to be instated after repeated incidents that will not be elaborated on in these pages.

  This thing—the weekly gathering, the ardent reading, the provocative discussion, and the anthology—was founded by Dave Eggers in 2002, and this year Dave passed the torch on to two Daniels, who shared the job of working with the BANR team. They did not share it fairly. One was a constant presence and a paragon of organization due to his impressive experience in such matters, while the other was often absent, due to book tours and a grievous injury, and would often crack cheap jokes and offer odd, off-kilter advice. On the other hand, that second person brought delicious snacks that he paid for with his own money.

  Longtime readers of these anthologies will note that the new regime has brought a few changes—there is no more “Front Section,” in which shorter pieces were once gathered—but that the spirit of BANR remains kicky. We hope this collection will introduce you to some new writers and publications and remind you of the immense spectrum and verve of our current writing scene.

  Finally, thank you to our peers in Ann Arbor, who have their own committee at 826Michigan. They met weekly, just like us but with worse weather, and provided much-needed advice.

  DANIELS GUMBINER and HANDLER

  San Francisco, 2014

  INTRODUCTION

  RECENTLY IT WAS brought to my attention that a number of young people were cooped up in a windowless basement in the Mission District of San Francisco. Like all decent people, I found this alarming. If memory serves, I said something like “Egad!”

  “There’s no reason for ‘Egad’s,” explained a literary personage of some sort. “They’re sifting through this year’s supply of literature.”“Sifting through this year’s supply of literature!” I repeated, in a sputtery tone I reserve for repeating astonishing things people have said. “This is an outrage! What sinister slave drivers have abducted teenagers and are requiring them to do their literature-sifting for them?”

  “No, no,” said the other person, sounding a little sputtery himself. “Nobody is requiring them to do this. They want to do it. They’re putting together an anthology and the anthology is called The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and it’s really quite terrific.”

  I said something along the lines of “That still sounds suspicious,” and it does. For one thing, nobody, young or old, wakes up in the morning and decides to put together an anthology. It’s a task requiring a tremendous amount of dull work. In order to find lively pieces of literature one wants to anthologize, one has to read an enormous amount of wretched literature one wants to toss out the window, and in a windowless basement this is even more troublesome than it is ordinarily.

  Additionally, literature is slippery and slippery things cause disagreements. Although absolutely everyone agrees on what is best in ice cream flavors (chocolate and peanut butter), seasons (autumn), Eastern European composers (Bela Bartok), inspiring slogans (“To the ramparts!”), or scary movies (The Lair of the White Worm), there is a surprisingly vast difference of opinion on what is good to read. So if you have a team of anthologists, you are going to have a team of arguments. “How could you possibly have admiration for that essay and not appreciate these poems?” and, “Anyone who disagrees with me about this comic is a blithering fool!” and, “If you don’t like this short story and don’t despise this stage play, I’m going to tear my hair out!” are cries commonly heard from an anthologists’ den.

  Invariably, the most passionate and interesting pieces of writing divide a literary team, and are put aside in favor of less controversial items, and these safer pieces of literature tend to be dull, and then the anthology is dull, and there is only one way to make people read something dull: to require it. Want many people to read what you write? Write something interesting. Want everyone to read it? Write something mandatory. From Dick and Jane to How to Redeem Your Airline Miles, from To Kill a Mockingbird to Do Not Enter, we read things we would not read under any circumstances simply because we are in circumstances which require us to do so.

  Therefore, the idea of a group of young people discussing literature in a room in which nothing can be thrown out the windows, and thus creating an anthology that is “terrific” but optional is laughable, and after I explained this to the literary personage, I laughed out loud scornfully to prove it was so.

  “There’s no need for a scornful laugh,” the person said to me. “You are quite wrong on all counts. These young people were very eager to do this. Wretched literature can be tossed into a recycling bin rather than thrown out a window. Fierce discussion can be tempered by a robust esprit de corps, a phrase which here means that an enthusiasm for the project at hand kept disagreements respectful. And the anthology is really wonderful. Look here, I happen to have the manuscript of it right here with me. Peruse it and judge for yourself. Observe how the anthology opens with a deadpan pedagogical pseudo-instructional speculative humor piece, and moves quickly to Bolivian fiction, cult investigation, pet shop philosophizing, activist inquiries, and lyric poetry. Observe the balance of famed and unknown authors, the straightforward and the askew, the dramatic and the subtle, the hilarious and the weepy. Dull, mandatory anthologies, my foot! This collection of literature is so ferociously entertaining and veeringly diversified that we could no more make it mandatory than we could fashion it out of fish! Readers will be drawn to it like yarn to a kitten! Far from being Nonrequired, we could m
ake this anthology Nonrecommended, or even Taboo, or Unthinkable, and still people would come in both literal and figurative droves!”

  This person’s enthusiasm was contagious, if a bit loud. People were looking. I took the manuscript from him and began to read.

  “Very well then,” I said, when I finished reading the manuscript a few days later. People were still looking at us. “You are correct. This is a magnificent piece of work. In fact, I would be proud to be associated with it despite having nothing to do with its creation, perhaps by writing an introduction.”

  “You already have!” crowed this other person in triumph. “I have been surreptitiously recording and transcribing our entire encounter, and will publish it forthwith. I will add nothing but a bland, inspirational final sentence, so that out of the whole anthology, only your introduction will be of the unimaginative, uninspiring sort of writing you were decrying earlier!”

  “I knew something suspicious was going on!” I cried in more or less dread, and then said “Egad!” which I think this time was called for.

  Have fun reading this anthology, everybody!!

  LEMONY SNICKET

  Lemony Snicket is the author of the thirteen-book sequence A Series of Unfortunate Events and the four-book series All the Wrong Questions, among (too) many others.

  MATTHEW SCHULTZ

  On the Study of Physics in Preschool Classrooms: Pedagogy and Lesson Planning

  FROM Ecotone

  Beginning Your Unit

  Though it may seem natural to begin your study of the physical universe with the moon, educators working in urban areas should skip ahead to section two, for in cities, especially large ones like New York and Tokyo, the moon is mostly irrelevant. Appearing small and weak behind skyscrapers, it fails to capture the imaginations of urban children and parents alike. They may wonder at the wastefulness of the moon, which sits in the sky contributing nothing when it could very well be used as a site for low-income housing or made into a screen on which the time and the weather are perpetually displayed. Teachers in suburbs and rural areas should begin with a simple observation of the moon. After all, it is thanks to the moon that humankind ever noticed the sky. Something always indicates the presence of nothing.