We have reached the time of year when collections of the best writing of the year become available, either for your own library or as perfect holiday gifts. The Best American series was launched in 1915, and it is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction, and it is the most respected, and popular, in this genre.
In this review, we will examine three of them: The Best American Essays 2024, edited by Wesley Morris and Kim Dana Kupperman; The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2024, edited by Padma Lakshmi and Jaya Saxena; and The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024, edited by S.A. Cosby and Steph Cha.
The Best American Essays 2024
Edited by Wesley Morris and Kim Dana Kupperman
Mariner Books; paperback, 320 pages; $18.99; available today, Tuesday, October 22nd
Wesley Morris is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a critic at large for the New York Times. He began his career at the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner before becoming the film critic at The Boston Globe from 2002 to 2013. Before joining The Times, he worked at Grantland as a staff writer and the Sportstorialist as a columnist. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his criticism at The Globe in 2012, and another for criticism with The Times in 2021.
Kim Dana Kupperman is the founding editor of Welcome Table Press, whose mission it is to publish and celebrate the essay, in all its forms. She is the author of the award-winning essay collections I Just Lately Started Buying Wings: Missives from the Other Side of Silence; a memoir, The Last of Her; and a historical novel, Six Thousand Miles to Home. She is also the editor of You: An Anthology of Essays Devoted to the Second Person.
Morris and Kupperman select the best twenty essays, out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year. These essays include Jenisha from Kentucky, by Jenisha Watts, from The Atlantic; Reframing Vermeer, by Teju Cole, from New York Times Magazine; Mere Belief, by Sallie Tisdale, from Harper's Magazine; The Lives of Bryan, by Jennifer Sinor, from The American Scholar; It's Hard Out Here for a Memoirist, by Jerald Walker, from Prairie Schooner; Proxemics, by Jonathan Gleason, from Colorado Review; and Woodstove, by Brock Clarke, from Five Points.
Morris writes in the introduction of being given the opportunity to guest edit this collection: "Last November, this series's editor, Jim Dana Kupperman, mailed me the first of two substantial bundles. Each a manila folder taco. Spread width-wise, the shell cupped a casserole of tessellated paper, some printed out, most so diligently extracted from their sources so that you could trace your fingers along the soft teeth of perforation. They were essays. And in addition to being selected, their presentation also looked picked, as in pulled up from earth, like vegetables. She secured the whole thing with two extra large rubber bands, one red, one purple. Two months later, came taco number two. Same idea. Different rubber bands. In both cases, I left it to rest on my desk and, for more than a week, I'd just look up from the television or the newspaper or from typing and just...admire it. To and from the kitchen, I'd cruise it. That's how handsome and attentively, imaginatively, assembled it was. For decades, Robert Atwan helmed this series to perfection (the man could write a foreword). This is Kim's first edition. The craft of those bundles represents the meticulous care of her stewardship. These books are in strong hands. But let's not be too precious about it: They were also piles of work. Work Kim had already completed. Work I had yet to do.
Labor, however, was never a meaningful factor. Reading every single stapled sheaf she'd sent, plus a handful more, was one of the high points of my life - the anticipation of the occasional days I knew could do almost nothing but read essays was childlike, the respite a literary snow day. Even the misbegotten pieces taught me something: about what the author wanted to communicate, yes; but also that imparting some piece of yourself - and part - is arduous and warrants some kind of commendation. Occasionally, I'll finish writing a piece I know isn't 'there' but feel relief anyway. It'll either get there or I'll get it next time. But allow me to state the obvious: this shit is hard. Every sentence is a risk. And sometimes I'm not sure why we're taking it. A rebuttal often radiated from within Kim's bundles: because we have to. As a class, they did a little of everything to me: surprise, astound, bewitch, reframe, knock me down, crack me up, push, enlighten, inspire...
Anytime I have to respond to 'what do you do,' 'I'm a critic' is what I say. And here is this critic introducing a collection of essays - the best of them, from last year. So, in explaining that I'm a critic, that I assess, analyze, inspect, rhapsodize, reconsider, enthuse, that what I write is based on an inspired by, that my imagination corresponds to the imaginations of others, what I should be telling you is what I'm not. And that is an essayist."
The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2024
Edited by Padma Lakshmi and Jaya Saxena
Mariner; paperback, 320 pages; $18.99; available today, Tuesday, October 22nd
Padma Lakshmi is an Emmy-nominated producer, television host, food expert, and a New York Times bestselling author. She is the creator, host, and executive producer of the Hulu series Taste the Nation, and the longtime host of Bravo's two-time Emmy-winning series Top Chef. She has authored two cookbooks, Easy Exotic and Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet, and the New York Times bestselling memoir Love, Loss, and What We Ate, and The Encyclopedia of Spices & Herbs.
Jaya Saxena is the co-author of Basic Witches, and a staff writer at Eater. Her work has appeared in outlets including the New York Times, GQ, ELLE, Electric Literature, and Toast.
This is the first year of this series' rebranding to include Travel, which reflects how the genre of Food writing has evolved. This is Saxena's first year as Editor, and Lakshmi the latest in a long line of prolific experts who have previously edited the Food series, including Ruth Reichl, Mark Bittman, and Gabrielle Hamilton.
Lakshmi selected the best twenty articles published in 2023 that celebrate food and travel, which include "New American," "Fusion," and the Endless Liberating Challenge of Describing American Food Right Now, by Navneet Alang, from Bon Appetit; The Science of Savoring, by Betsy Andrews, from Saveur; The Gay Roots of (Ugh) Friensgiving, by John Birdsall, from Shifting the Food Narrative; Orange Is the New Yolk, by Marian Bull, from Eater; India's Beef with Beef, by Sharanya Deepak, from The Baffler; and The Hungry Jungle, by Melissa Johnson, from Outside Magazine; Notable Sandwiches #75: Grilled Cheese, by Talia Lavin, from The Sword and the Sandwich.
Lakshmi writes in the introduction of being given the opportunity to guest edit this collection: "Three years ago, when I had the pleasure of guest editing the 2021 edition of The Best American Travel Writing, I had no idea it would be its last. So, when I heard that the anthology would be revived, albeit in combination with The Best American Food Writing, I was thrilled. Food and travel are natural companions, after all. Being asked to return to edit this inaugural edition felt like kismet: my professional life has pivoted around the intersection of the two. And yet, when I sat down to write, I was stymied. On a drab January day warmer than it should have been, my mother phoned to tell me my father had died - a year earlier. For months, my mother had been feeling uneasy. She kept dreaming about a man she hadn't seen in over fifty years. Him: my father. Unable to shake his specter loose, she called in some reliable auntie to sleuth back in India and learned of his passing. No one had thought to tell me.
Several times over the previous year, my mother had asked me if I'd spoken to my father or my half sister. I said I had not. The last time had been two or three years before, when my half sister had called to tell me her mother had died and that my father wanted me to be in touch. 'He'd really like to hear from you,' she said. I would have really liked to hear from him too, all my life, I thought. I never reached out.
Now, it was too late. I hung up and wept.
Now, I sat before a stack of manuscripts and a laptop, the bright blankness of its screen irritatingly cheerful, anticipatory.
I closed the laptop. I cried again. Rinse, wash, repeat.
What I was crying for...I couldn't even tell you.
Twenty-five years ago, I met my biological father for the first and only time.
Technically, he had met me before - but the last time we'd seen each other I had been two years old. My parents were meeting to sign the paperwork finalizing their divorce. Sreaks of melted vanilla ice cream shellacked my chin and stained my blouse, ice cream my mother had plied me with in the hopes this meeting would seem to me a happy (or at least not unhappy) occasion. The mess enraged my father and he chastised my mother for failing 'to control the child.' I have no memory of this meeting, and I have no memories of my father.
On the train from Madras (now Chennai), where I had been visiting my grandparents, to Bangalore (now Bengaluru), where I was set to meet my father in the lobby of the Taj Hotel I wondered if I would somehow recognize him. In the years before that morning in the lobby, I had seen just one picture of him, a long surviving image of my parents' marriage photo. All other photographic evidence of him had been wiped from existence, torn up by my mother's family.
As I entered the lobby and scanned it for men of a certain age, I saw a tall, slim man in a brown suit that hung loosely on his frame come toward me. My father. Standing across from me was the man I had searched for in the faces of unknown men I saw on every trip to India, in restaurants and coffee shops, in stores and at the beach. My father's face was thin and longish, like mine would become in the decades after this meeting. I had his nose and his eyes, more almond and less round than the eyes of my mother's family.
My father suggested we leave the Taj and head for lunch. He said he'd like to take me to the private club where he was a member - he seemed proud of this fact. Private social clubs were a relic of the British Raj, a hangover of the colonial era. Originally designed as exclusive social settings for British elites (signs outside clubs famously proclaimed, 'No Dogs, No Indians'), they thrived now as exclusive social settings in a culture still enamored with caste and social class. On the way there, he explained that the club specialized in Western food and that their sandwiches were exceptionally good.
Eating in India was always a roller coaster ride of flavor, color, textures, and heat. Before every visit back to see my family, I kept a mental list of the things I couldn't wait to eat. On the four-hour trip inland, I had sooted my nerves imagining a bowl of bisi bele bath, a comforting spicy porridge of lentils and rice with vegetables that was a regional specialty. At the very least, I had been hoping for a Mysore dosa, my favorite type of masala dosa - a crispy rice crepe, smeared on the inside with red chili paste for heat and bite, folded over soft-cooked potatoes tossed with turmeric and ginger. Bangalore was the capital of Karnataka, and these were the specialties of Karnataka cuisine. In a country rich with spices and countless regional curries, I found it odd that he would bring me somewhere to eat a cold sandwich."
The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024
Edited by S.A. Cosby and Steph Cha
Mariner; paperback, 320 pages; $18.99; available today, Tuesday, October 22nd
S.A. Cosby is an Anthony Award-winning writer from Southeastern Virginia who is the author of Razorblade Tears, a New York Times bestseller, and Blacktop Wasteland, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was named a best book of the year by NPR, The Guardian, and Library Journal.
Steph Cha is the author of the Juniper Song mystery series and Your House Will Pay, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller and the California Book Award. She is an editor and critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she edited the noir section for almost five years.
This collection of the year's best mystery and suspense short fiction selected by Cosby and Cha include the following: Scarlet Ribbons, by Megan Abbott, from A Darker Shade of Noir; Matter of Trust, by Frankie Y. Bailey, from School of Hard Knox; For I Hungered, and Ye Gave Me, by Barrett Bowlin, from TriQuarterly; Just a Girl, by Alyssa Cole, from Obsession, Amazon Originals; Rumpus Room, by Tananarive Due, from The Wishing Pool and Other Stories; The Body Farm, by Abby Geni, from Epoch; and Lovely and Useless Things, by Nils Gilbertson, from Prohibition Peepers.
Cosby writes in the introduction of being given the opportunity to guest edit this collection: "The summer after I graduated from high school I went to the library to get some books for the weekend. Yes, I was the kind of kid who got books for the weekend. instead of being invited to parties. Anyway, as I was pursuing the shelves I came across a book of short stories called The Best American Mystery Stories, edited by Sue Grafton.
At this time in my life, I knew I wanted to be a writer but I wasn't sure what genre was best for me. I loved horror novels and sci-fi and fantasy. However, my heart always seemed to come back to mysteries, to crime fiction. Before that day I'd never heard of the BAMS. But in that anthology, under Sue Grafton's sure hand, I found short stories that moved me, that made me laugh, that made me think. I think it was the first time I really understood the power of the short crime story. The magic that happens for a brief moment, like a shooting star streaking across the sky, when you read a story that grabs you by the hand and says, 'Come with me, see what I have to show you.'
It's not always pretty what we are shown but then again, we can't appreciate the light without the darkness. We can't enjoy the sweetness without a taste of the bitter. These days the market for short stories is eroding like a thin strip of beach in a hurricane and I think that's a shame. Some of the greatest crime and mystery writers of all time were masters of the form. It's a special skill that combines brevity with with and cleverness and the hint of the existential malaise that imbues crime fiction with its gravitas."
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