Dave Eggers - The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012

Copyright 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Editors Note copyright 2012 by Dave Eggers

Introduction copyright 2012 by Ray Bradbury

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Best American Series is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading is a trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not authorized to grant permission for further uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this book without the permission of their owners. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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ISSN : 1539-316 X
ISBN : 978-0-547-59596-2

e ISBN : 978-0-547-84052-9
v2.0116

Sonnet, with Vengeance by Sherman Alexie. First published in Zone 3, 2011. Copyright 2011 by Sherman Alexie. Reprinted by permission of the author.

A Fable for the Living by Kevin Brockmeier. First published in Electric Literature, 2011. Copyright 2011 by Kevin Brockmeier. Reprinted by permission of Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc.

Tin Man by Judy Budnitz. First published in This American Life. Copyright 2011 by Judy Budnitz. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Money by Junot Daz. First published in The New Yorker. Copyright 2011 by Junot Daz. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Greenward Palindrome by Barry Duncan. First published in The Believer. Copyright 2011 by Barry Duncan. Reprinted by permission of the Wylie Agency, LLC.

The Years of My Birth by Louise Erdrich. First published in The New Yorker. Copyright 2011 by Louise Erdrich. Reprinted by permission of Voice of Witness.

An Oral History of Olivia Hamilton by Olivia Hamilton, Robin Levi, and Ayelet Waldman. First published in Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Womens Prisons. Copyright 2011 by Olivia Hamilton. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Beat Poets, Not Beat Poets by Robert Hass. First published in The New York Times. Copyright 2011 by Robert Hass. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Common Threads by Adam Hochschild. First published in The Occupied Wall Street Journal. Copyright 2011 by Adam Hochschild. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Redeployment by Phil Klay. First published in Granta. Copyright 2011 by Phil Klay. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Kamikaze by Nora Krug. First published in A Public Space. Copyright 2011 by Nora Krug. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Palace of the People by Anthony Marra. First published in Narrative Magazine. Copyright 2011 by Anthony Marra. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Children by Julie Otsuka. First published in Granta. Copyright 2011 by Julie Otsuka. Reprinted by permission of Julie Otsuka, Inc.

The Street of the House of the Sun by Michael Poore. First published in The Pinch. Copyright 2011 by Michael Poore. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Beautiful Monsters by Eric Puchner. First published in Tin House. Copyright 2011 by Eric Puchner. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Jeff, One Lonely Guy by Jeff Ragsdale, David Shields, Michael Logan. First published in Jeff, One Lonely Guy. Copyright 2011 by Jeff Ragsdale, David Shields, Michael Logan. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

Bellwether by Mark Robert Rapacz. First published in Water~Stone Review. Copyright 2011 by Mark Robert Rapacz. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Love Act by Chaz Reetz-Laiolo. First published in Raritan. Copyright 2011 by Chaz Reetz-Laiolo. Reprinted by permission of the author.

South Beach by Ryan Rivas. First published in Annalemma. Copyright 2011 by Ryan Rivas. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Amazing Adventures of Phoenix Jones by Jon Ronson. First published in GQ. Copyright 2011 by Jon Ronson. Reprinted by permission of the author. Photographs first published in occupydesign.org. Copyright 2011 by Peter Yang. Reprinted by permission of the photographer.

Letter in the Mail by The Rumpus. First published in The Rumpus. Copyright 2011 by The Rumpus. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Tenth of December by George Saunders. First published in The New Yorker. Copyright 2011 by George Saunders. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Notes from a Bystander by Sad Sayrafiezadeh. First published in McSweeneys. Copyright 2011 by Sad Sayrafiezadeh. Reprinted by permission of the author.

A Sisters Eulogy for Steve Jobs by Mona Simpson. Copyright 2011 by Mona Simpson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Peytons Place by John Jeremiah Sullivan. First published in GQ. Copyright 2011 by John Jeremiah Sullivan. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Letter in the Mail, by The Rumpus. First published in The Rumpus. Copyright 2011 by The Rumpus. Reprinted by permission of The Rumpus.

A Brief History of the Art Form Known as Hortisculpture by Adrian Tomine. First published in Optic Nerve. Copyright 2011 by Adrian Tomine. Reprinted by permission of Drawn & Quarterly.

Outlaw by Jose Antonio Vargas. First published in The New York Times Magazine. Copyright 2011 by Jose Antonio Vargas. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Dont Eat Cat by Jess Walter. First published in Byliner. Copyright 2011 by Jess Walter. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Paper Tigers by Wesley Yang. First published in New York. Copyright 2011 by Wesley Yang. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Hello, readers. Welcome to the Best American Nonrequired Reading. Given no one reads forewords written by editors, especially given this is the tenth foreword Ive written, I will be brief.

How This Book Is Made

For ten years now, Ive been teaching a class every Tuesday night, the class that puts this anthology together: the Best American Nonrequired Reading. Every year its a new group of students, up to about twenty-two of them in a given yearstudents drawn from all over the Bay Area, from Oakland to San Rafael, from San Franciscos Excelsior to the Sunset and everywhere in between. Halfway across the country, a sister class, in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area, is doing the same thing. For the students in California and Michigan, the class is voluntary and extracurricular and very simple: We read and discuss contemporary writing. We subscribe to a few hundred journals and magazines, and we read, desultorily, everything we can. And when we think somethings worth sharing with the class, we all read it, and then we dig in and break it down and vote yes or no or maybe. The class discussions are electric, heated, funny, wide-ranging, and fluid. We jump all over the place, and if something we read leads to a discussion about a larger issue, we go with it. The class crosses into politics, current events, history, philosophy, art history, literary theory, and a dozen other disciplines. We argue, we battle, we vote, and eventually, in order to get this book together, we compromise and we curate. It is a ringing testament to the fact that contrary to various uninformed pundits, young people read as much and as passionately as the generations before them, and that the future of the writteneven printedword is in good hands and good minds, if we trust and encourage those minds.