CHILDREN PLAYING BEFORE A STATUE OF HERCULES, edited by David Sedaris, Simon & Schuster, 343 pages, softcover, $14.95.
"Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules" is worth every penny of its small price tag — to get hold of some of the best short stories ever written.
Edited by David Sedaris, who is well-known for "Me Talk Pretty One Day" and "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim," the collection includes many of the short-story writers who must be rated as classical — Alice Munroe, Frank Gannon, Richard Yates, Dorothy Parker, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor and Tobias Wolff. And almost as famous are Charles Baxter, Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel and Tim Johnston.
The great thing about a short story is that you can read it quickly in one sitting and get its full impact. The bad thing is that many writers never achieve excellence in the short story. They build the reader up for a letdown, they end too soon, their characters are not fully developed . . . whatever.
But often, those short-story writers who are good are very good indeed — which is the case with most of those in this collection.
The selection also says something about Sedaris, the editor, who has had a considerable career telling stories onstage. This collection hints at who may have influenced him along the way.
In his introduction, he exults, "The authors in this book are huge to me, and I am a comparative midget, scratching around in their collective shadow. 'Pint-sized Fanatic Bowing Before Statues of Hercules' might have been more concise, but people don't paint things like that, and besides, it doesn't sound very good."
It's also worth noting that Sedaris is publishing this book to support 826NYC, a nonprofit tutoring center in Brooklyn. The proceeds will benefit an organization designed to help students ages 6 to 18 with one-on-one help in homework and English-language learning. Sarah Vowell describes some of the work done by 826NYC in her punchy epilogue.
Possibly a negative about the book is that the reader easily gets the feeling that there is not enough of Tobias Wolff in his very short story, "Bullet in the Brain," about the arrogant book critic, even though the pleasure of Wolff's marvelous gift with words is more startling because the words are so few.
And who would admit they had never read anything by the amazing Flannery O'Connor, whose story, "Revelation," mesmerizes until the end.
Joyce Carol Oates, whose work is so diverse, can be happily sampled here with "The Girl with the Blackened Eye."
Saddest of all would be if the reader never read more of the works of all these brilliant writers, whether in short story or novel — because they're the best.
But couldn't Sedaris have included at least one story by the classy writer Richard Ford?
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com