What we can't speak about we must pass over in silence by Edgar Wideman

This is a superbly written short story. The opening line is: "I have a friend with a son in prison."
The friend dies and the man feels obligated to visit his son in jail. The story is wrapped up in the irony of getting through the red tape just to visit the son. The man finally shows up at the prison with less than expected results...

Accomplice by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

This story definitely had me looking up a few words that I didn't know existed:
acuity = keenness of sight, hearing or intellect
perspicacious = perceptive
iconoclastic = someone who challenges beliefs, customs, or traditions
beatific = expressing great happiness
lumpen proletariat = with a life regarded as intellectually empty and socially inferior who is part of the working class
cataleptic = the state resembling a trance
zazen = a form of meditation in Zen
futzed = to spend time frivolously, lazily, or aimlessly
cicatrix = medicine or a scar left on a stem where a leaf used to be attached

As you can see I learned a few new words in this story. The title is not really telling what the story is about in the sense of what one thinks of when it comes to an accomplice. This story is about student progress reports and how they are merely anecdotes for teachers to write year after year which could almost be written on form letters. However, this teacher wanted to try an experiment. Students were to write their parents an identity of themselves. One girl writes her story only to have the teacher (obviously) pick it apart and mark it up thoroughly with at red pen. The girl's father simply writes counter arguments against what her teacher had written on her essay. In a sense it the father in the story as well as the teacher act as accomplices to the students in writing raving reviews of them so that they can move on to the next grade. This is a very well written story.

Tooth and Claw by T. Coraghessan Boyle

The main point of this story is living with what life dishes out to you. He "wins" a serval (an African wild cat) while playing dice in the local bar. A girl decides to leave him. He discovers the difficult trying to keep a wild cat in his apartment. (Obviously a wild can and an apartment are not a good mix) At the end of the story is a cliff hanger: He decides to go into the room with the cat...

Docent by R.T. Smith

This story is about showing off what you know. The story is told from the perspective of the docent, or the tour guide Sybil Mildred Clemm Legrand Pascal. The voice and tempo is that of a docent. The entire story is told in monologue and the form is just as descriptive of the docent herself: it is basically one entire paragraph. Sybil is taking people on a tour of Lee Chapel on the campus of Washington and Lee University. Sybil seems to know it all; at least she thinks she does...

What kind of furniture would Jesus pick? by Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx does a masterful job in capturing irony on paper. "Where is that stupid mailman?" his mother said, pulling back the curtain and looking for the plume of dust along the road. The woman is waiting for an "Inheritance" from the California State Allocation Department. The woman's son had interited a ranch but she was to fill out information and send it in to the "Department" to recieve her inheritance. This story is an axiom that can be applied to today: if it's too good to be true it probably is.

Gallatin Canyon by Thomas McGuane

Said my attorney: Make him mad. So I was headed to Rigby, ID, expressly to piss off a small town businessman. This story is about a man who is trying to make the buyer no want the property so that he can make more money off another prospective buyer. The story is very descriptive of his trip to Rigby as well as the town itself. After ticking the guy off in their meeting, the seller says: "Oren, I was attached to this little enterprise. I wanted to be sure you valued it." The seller, in his own mind, wants to sell to another person, but at the last minute decides to sell to the man. As he heads back home with Lousa, his girlfriend, a car pulls up behind them, puts their lights on bright and follows them...
I'll let you read the story to find out how it ends. (Aren't I mean?)
A great read, especially if you know anything about rural, and Rigby Idaho.

The Walk With Elizanne by John Updike

I absolutely love this story. This is about David Kern who goes back to his to 50 year reunion where he finds a long lost schoolmate named Elizanne.
"As the classmates began to shuffle toward the door and whatever fate the next five years would bring, Elizanne came up to David, resting a hand on his forearm and speaking with a firm, lilting urgency, almost as if she were speaking to herself.
"David," she said, in this running murmur, "there's something I've been wanting for years to say to you. You were very important to me. You were the first boy who ever walked me home and --- and kissed me."
Shortly after he replies:
'"I remember that walk," he said. But did he? The walk; for weeks after the reunion his mind could not let go of the walk she reminded him they had taken.'

The end of the story reverts back to the walk he had with her.

She says, "I chatter. I go on too much."
"You didn't. It was like you were singing to me. . . . And there was even more," she said . . . that I wanted to say."
"You will, he promised . . . I want to hear it all," he told Elizanne. "We have t-tons of time."

John Updike does a masterful job at capturing David's innermost thoughts and struggles to relive and even remember the past. The Walk with Elizanne is definitely one of the best short stories I have read from the year 2004.

Limestone Diner by Trudy Lewis

I only wrote one line down from this story:
"What's your hurry, woman? You think the gossip will be all dried up before you get there?"

Honestly, can't remember the plot to this story but I do remember that there were some funny parts in it, including this one.

Screenwriter by Charles D'Ambrosio

Well, going from the best American short stories of the century to some of the most recent, I will expound upon the best short stories from the year 2004 working backward by year. Each story will be labeled according to the year it was published.

Screenwriter by Charles D'Ambrosio is the story about a man who is in the loony bin in Manhattan who befriends a girl known as the ballerina. She is into burning herself and he is a cutter.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked.
"I don't know," I said.
"You must have a diagnosis. Everyone has a diagnosis. You know your diagnosis," she said.
"Whatever - Bipolar II, Fruit of the Loom IV, it doesn't make a difference."

A great story about both the comical and dark side of diagnoses.