Best American Short Stories 1990 (selected by Richard Ford)

When it comes to American short stories, I found Richard Ford’s last collection, Sorry For Your Trouble, well-crafted but predictable, stale even, the same tropes revisited. No new light comes to pierce his dim view on life. But he can certainly spot and pick some good’uns by other writers, and although there’s a tendency to be period pieces about family and place, the standard in this selection is high.
 
I particularly liked C.S Godshalk’s The Wizard and there were two that made me sit up and really take notice—you know, that lift you get when something really interesting is going on in the writing: Car-Crash While Hitchhiking by Denis Johnson and How to Talk to a Hunter by Pam Houston.