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Cori Yonge reviews THE BEST OF THE SHORTEST a Southern Writers Reading reunion
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Cori Yonge reviews THE BEST OF THE SHORTEST a Southern Writers Reading reunion
I’m not a scholar of southern literature, but admittedly I lean that direction. My husband does too, and as such, the book shelves in our home are lined with southern authors. It’s a wide collection of classic and contemporary literature ranging from the most obvious – Harper Lee, Willie Morris, Pat Conroy – to the lesser known but equally admirable, such as my former neighbor Judith Richards. Prized among them are Stories from the Blue Moon Café; annual collections of short stories edited by Alabama author Sonny Brewer in the days when he and a small band of writers and literature lovers nurtured Southern Writers Reading (SWR). Brewer described the yearly event, hosted in Fairhope, Alabama, as “literature as a spectator sport.” Which meant, literally, one after another, southern writers took to the stage, holding the audience captive with finely crafted sentences. Many of the tales could be found in Stories from the Blue Moon Café, but sounded sexier and grittier coming directly from the source rather than read silently to oneself. The last Southern Writers Reading played out in 2008, but 15 years later, we get a reprise, and of course, an accompanying compilation of short stories.
The Best of the Shortest, edited by long-time SWR writer and participant Suzanne Hudson, along with Joe Formichella and Mandy Haynes packs forty southern storytellers into less than two hundred pages. As the title suggests, their stories are limited to fifteen hundred words, though some run longer. And others, such as author Beth Ann Fennelly’s micro memoirs, span little more than a paragraph or two. There are readers who will cheer the brevity, acknowledging that scrolling on social media has remodeled our brains and altered our attention spans. But don’t plan on whipping through the book. If anything, these compact stories will challenge your thinking, offering an opportunity to pause and reflect on the human condition.
Though the stories stand on their own, the book’s introduction by Hudson and its afterword by Jim Gilbert afford readers a fuller understanding of SWR’s origins including Gilbert explanation of the event’s informal branding as a “literary slugfest.” Skipping either would cheat oneself of a bit of southern literary history as well as fail to whet your appetite for the impending SWR reunion. Reading both will ensure you’ll contract a case of FOMO (fear of missing out) – which in this instance is a good thing.
The tales in The Best of the Shortest will evoke a roller-coaster of emotions. Some like Dayne Sherman’s “Snakebit,” Jason Headley’s “An Explosion When you See One,” and Hudson’s “The Thing with the Feathers,” are rooted in Southern Gothic – quintessential Grit Lit genre exploring region, class, and southern culture. You’ve met the fictional characters in these Southern Gothic stories. Stop at a small town convenience store to fill up with gas and he’s the guy in the checkout line with a Budweiser and a Slim Jim. For these characters, life is a hardship and good ol’ boy personas mask a well of anger feeding a mean streak. In “Snakebit” a nameless narrator avenges the poisoning of his beloved hunting dog Earl, at the hands of a “rotten sumbitch” neighbor. “An Explosion When You See One” introduces readers to childhood friends Birddog and Kurt as they navigate their messy relationship with the same woman. And Hudson’s “The Thing with the Feathers,” one of the anthology’s darkest tales, is an uncomfortable story about child abuse.
While the collection is for Southern Writers Reading, to be clear, not all the authors were born and raised in the south. As Hudson points out early in her intro, “The truth is you didn’t really have to be southern to participate in SWR.” Writers simply needed a connection to the south. As such, the book is so much more than the Grit Lit described above. Among others, it touches on themes of marriage, siblings, parents, southern delicacies, and pandemic gardening. Author Tom Franklin, who is southern born and raised, departs from his usual Grit Lit genre with “My Wife’s Good-Looking Friends,” A self-deprecating essay about his marriage to author Beth Ann Fennelly. In five quick paragraphs, Franklin expounds on the inadequacies of being “average looking” among the “good-looking” and why he prefers his “wife’s ugly friends.” Anyone who has ever had a moment of self-doubt about their looks, will both empathize with Franklin and find a touch of humor.
If you’re a connoisseur of southern culture, you know the editors would be remiss if their collection of southern themed stories did not include tales of whiskey and southern food. Pulitzer Prize winning author Rick Bragg delivers on the former with “The Mystery of Good Liquor.” Initially published in Garden & Gun April/May 2023 as “Rick Bragg’s Whiskey Blues” the author ponders, as only Bragg can, why his taste buds fail to distinguish the high-dollar stuff from the rot gut. Chef, restaurateur, and food writer Robert St. John tackles the latter with “Chitlins,” a hilarious essay quite possibly giving new meaning to the term grit lit. With a hearty sense of humor, St. John describes his first, and very likely last, mouthful of chitlins; anatomically known as pig intestines. Here’s a sample: “Gathering up all the epicurean courage I could muster, I took a bite. Actually, I only ate a small piece off of one individual chitlin. Singular: chitli. Friends and neighbors, chitlins don’t taste anything like calamari.” I’ve read the essay three times and I’m still howling. I found both Bragg’s and St. John’s musings a nice balance to the anthology’s more serious content.
Livingston Press will release The Best of the Shortest in mid-November, just in time for the SWR reunion and the holiday gift-giving season. Certainly attendance at the reunion isn’t mandatory to value the solid story telling in this anthology. Buy the book, even if you can’t make it to the event. But if you’re eager to add a new sport to your Saturday afternoon line-up, I promise, with this bunch, substituting a literary slugfest for fall football will prove equally entertaining.
