The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 Book

The Best American Nonrequired Reading series has long been a collection which can be expected to deliver some off-the-beaten path writing. This particularly volume, 2002, was the inaugural volume, and as such, it was different from later additions. It was interesting for me to see how the series had developed, so I burned through this edition.

First, Michael Cart, esteemed author of books for younger adult readers, was the series editor, and Dave Eggers and his fleet of teenager readers was the listed guest editor. From the introduction, Cart made it clear that he had an agenda: to change the stigma associated with young adult literature. Throughout the collection, this agenda plays out, as there are stories about and by teenagers (most notably, the collections last story by Zoe Trope, a Pacific Northwestern teenager and her inability to fit in with the average student). This is an agenda I feel drifts away from later collections.

There are some standout stories here: a couple from the Onion, a great little piece by Sedaris (again, running with what I feel to be Cart's agenda, the story dealt with popular kids in junior high). I really liked David Schickler's "Fourth Angry Mouse", a bizarre story about a staged reworking of Of Mice and Men using only large, numbered mice.

Intermixed with these personal narratives and short stories were a smattering of investigative journalism, including an awesome story by Gary Smith, "Higher Education", in which he explores Berlin, OH, and their Mennonite high school basketball team and the first black person and coach to arrive at the school. It was a moving story and important story about the role of sports in race relations, though at times tended to be overly maudlin in it's prose.

This is one thing that Eggers' and this collection do really well: blur the lines between fiction and nonfiction (which, I feel, is best portrayed by the inclusion of the Onion). There is not much that separate these stories. All of them have characters, driven by some action, overcoming obstacles and acheiving goals. There is a point-of-view, a perspective, a beginning-middle-end structure. Really, the only difference between the two is a label, which, as this collection and those that follow show, is mostly arbitrary. Good writing and good story telling, regardless of genre, is captivating, engaging literature. What does it matter if it happened or didn't?

At any rate, this was a good collection, though a bit shaky at times. This could be due to the unclear agenda, the newness of the collection, or the admittedly short time in which it was brought together. That said, it shows signs of the promising collection it later becomes and it was definitely worth the read.