Big Changes (Part 2: Love in the Time of Insensitivity)

“You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.”—Anton Chekhov

Chekhov has been on my mind lately. When preparing to meet with a doctor/writer whose story I’ll likely edit for Amazon, I looked over some old favorite stories another doctor/writer. And I was reminded of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s piece about de- and resensitization that was taken from his 2017 speech to the Whiting Award recipients. In it, he lists Chekhov’s rules for writing a great story:

“1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature

2. Total objectivity

3. Truthful descriptions of persons and objects

4. Extreme brevity

5. Audacity and originality

6. Compassion”

Does the sixth point in fact fly in the face of the previous five? How do you write compassionately, but also with an eye toward restraint and objectivity? In other words, how do you write clinically, and with heart?

A writer needs compassion both for characters and readers. Chekhov was a master at leaving space in his stories for readers own thoughts and interpretations. His stories, as Virginia Woolf wrote, “are inconclusive, we say, and proceed to frame a criticism based upon the assumption that stories ought to conclude in a way that we recognize. In so doing we raise the question of our own fitness as readers. Where the tune is familiar and the end emphatic—lovers united, villains discomfited, intrigues exposed—as it is in most Victorian fiction, we can scarcely go wrong. But where the tune is unfamiliar . . . as it is in Tchekov, we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony.”

It is the job of a writer to help readers hear the world in a new way. To be a good and compassionate writer, one must experience goodness and compassion oneself.

***

I have made the difficult decision to call it a wrap after eighteen years as the series editor of The Best American Short Stories and to focus on my work with Heidi Pitlor Editorial. Right now, I am finishing up my final volume with guest editor Lauren Groff, whose second published story appeared in my first volume, guest edited by Stephen King. I would say that I’ve watched Lauren grow as a writer over the years, but honestly, she arrived fully formed back then, a deeply feeling, articulate, visionary writer who’s been a rigorous and inspired final guest editor.  I have notified the twenty writers whose stories will appear in The Best American Short Stories 2024. It’s a literary, whip-smart, funny, subversive collection, one I’m proud to go out on.

Happily, I played a big role in helping HarperCollins choose and on-board my successor, Nicole Lamy. Yes, she is also an editor at Heidi Pitlor Editorial, in addition to being the former Boston Globe books editor, a former columnist at The New York Times Book Review, and an all-round wise, critical, and voracious reader.

I plan to cheer on Nicole and The Best American Short Stories from the sidelines now. The book is a wonderful sampler for readers. And it’s been a truly wonderful job for me all these years. So many moments—reading a great short story by a new writer; notifying a new writer that they made it into the book; listening to an actor read a short story aloud at Symphony Space in NY—will be deeply missed.

I’ll continue to serve as the editorial director of Plympton, and will of course continue work with HPE’s clients and editors. I’ve joined the board of the Kauai Writers Conference, and remain on other boards both local and national. I’m eager to focus on my mission to do what I can to help re-humanize writing and publication, to advocate for the value of human connection in this time of disconnection.

Stay tuned.