By page count, these are long stories that require a lot of patience, exacerbating the amalgamative effect. However, many of these stories have not aged particularly well, begging the question, why put them out into the world now?ĭue to the consistent tone and languorous pacing of the prose, many of the details blend together across disparate works.
The stories are sound from a craft perspective, and most were previously published in prestigious literary magazines (a handful of New Yorkers, Conjunctions, The Gettysburg Review). The ten stories presented, written as far back as 1988 and as recently as this year, are all adequate domestic dramas, well-crafted and subtle examinations of quotidian angst but they fall somewhat flat in the electrifying landscape of contemporary literature. Onto the scene arrives Fresh Complaint, the much-anticipated collection of stories by Jeffrey Eugenides. Indeed, Gay later notes, “And though I rarely am interested in stories about sad white people in sad marriages, there was one such story that absolutely made me forget I ever said I was not interested in such stories.” For many editors, calling out the passé tropes up front hypothetically mitigates the space they occupy in the slush, and often the most surprising gems are those that manage to defy or redefine the very tropes that have been blacklisted. Scroll through the submission guidelines of a few literary journals and you’ll likely find similar language. I offer up the kinds of work I am not really interested in reading - stories about college students, stories about writers, stories about sad white people in sad marriages, stories about addiction, stories about cancer.” In introducing her selections for The Masters Review Anthology VI, guest editor Roxane Gay writes, “When I am judging a literary contest, I am often asked what I am looking for in a good short story or essay.
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