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Likely Stories: The State We're In

A selection of stories by the acclaimed short-story writer, Anne Beattie. 

I’m Jim McKeown, welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and biographies.

In my early days of book collecting, I avidly searched out authors whose books I admired.  My goal was signed copies.  I only cared about the signature for my own personal collection – never about collection values.  Most authors gladly signed my books.  When I heard Anne Beattie had been asked to speak at Rutgers University, I headed there with a few of her novels.  I learned there would be no signing after the lecture, but I told the guard I was a free-lance writer and reviewer, and wanted to talk to her about an article I was writing.  She agreed to see me, and she graciously signed my copies and answered a few questions, which I dutifully wrote into my notebook.  All true, although the article never did find its way into print.  The best thing about book collecting is establishing a connection to an author – no matter how brief.

Anne Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award collections, in John Updike’s The Best Short Stories of the Century, and in The Best American Short Stories of 2014.  She has won numerous other awards.  She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia.  Beattie has come out with a collection of short stories, The State We’re In.  While I really love her novels, I am thoroughly seduced by her short stories.

These 15 stories are loosely connected.  One character, who appears in the first story, “What Magic Realism Would Be,” is Jocelyn, who agonizes over an assignment in her English class.  Her Uncle Raleigh encourages her, because he knows she is smart.  Beattie writes, “‘Thanks for saying something nice to me.’ // ‘That’s because I believe you deserve niceness, Jocelyn.’  […]  ‘If you don’t mind, could you print [your essay] out, because I can’t read that little screen, as you know.  And as I tell you every night.’ // She got up from his office chair, where she’d been slumped, writing and picking at her pedicure.  She turned on his printer.  When it printed out, it was not quite two pages. // ‘Yesterday’s was three pages,’ he said immediately. // ‘She’s tired of reading long papers.’ Jocelyn lied to Raleigh and Bettina – certainly to Bettina – and to her sort of best friend, who was lucky enough to be in Australia this summer, even if it did have to be with her family and her [,,,] brother, the challenged Daniel Junior, who picked his nose right in front of you” (3).  No political correctness in Jocelyn, and she certainly spares no one.

In the seventh story, “Endless Rain into a Paper Cup,” Jocelyn has a conversation with her English teacher.  Beattie writes, “Ms. Nementhal held open the side door.  Jocelyn trotted ahead of her, her ears a little zingy, for some reason.  Just listening to Ms. Nememthal had been exciting.  She seemed to think she could do anything.  If Jocelyn ever got into any college, it would be a miracle.  Her mother said that tutoring for the SAT was too expensive, and she couldn’t disagree.  All you could do was read stuff on the Internet and get pointers from your friends, the most helpful so far being that the questions were essentially simple, but they pointed you in a direction that made you question your own perceptions, so you’d change things at the last second and answer wrong” (76).  English professors can be quite influential.

If Anne Beattie is an unfamiliar name, The State We’re In is a fine entre into her world.  5 stars

Likely Stories is a production of KWBU.  Join me again next time for Likely Stories, and happy reading!

Life-long voracious reader, Jim McKeown, is an English Instructor at McLennan Community College. His "Likely Stories" book review can be heard every Thursday on KWBU-FM! Reviews include fiction, biographies, poetry and non-fiction. Join us for Likely Stories every Thursday featured during Morning Edition and All Things Considered with encore airings Saturday and Sunday during Weekend Edition.