Anthologies Offer Rich Treasure Of Short Stories

------------------------------- "The Best American Short Stories 1999" Amy Tan, guest editor; Katrina Kenison, series editor Houghton Mifflin, $13

"The O. Henry Awards Prize Stories 1999" Larry Dark, series editor Anchor Books, $11.95 -------------------------------

At the millennium's end, it's grand to see America's own literary genre, the short story, flourishing. Once again, the two annual commercial anthologies (another, The Pushcart Prize, restricts itself to work from small and literary presses) offer rich treasures in compact, affordable trade paperbacks.

What's not to like? Totaling more than 800 pages, there are 41 stories by 37 writers, addresses for editors and magazines consulted and contributors' notes, which give readers a glimpse of authors' mysterious processes.

Amy Tan, this year's BASS guest editor, admits a love for magic. From childhood, she was addicted to fairy tales, and there's a decidedly mystical streak to this year's volume.

In the opening selection, "The Hermit's Story" by Rick Bass, a Thanksgiving Day storm knocks out the power, but the darkness is held at bay by good friends, great food - ". . . we have just finished off an entire chocolate pie and three bottles of wine" - and stories by the fire. Amy, a dog trainer, tells about delivering six animals to a man named Gray Owl in northern Saskatchewan. On a training run, they become lost in the dense forest. Surviving the night proves possible when they make the amazing discovery of a frozen lake, which drained beneath its icy surface, leaving a natural shelter.

Stephen Dobyns' intriguing "Kansas" causes time to loop, while Melissa Hardy flashes back to tell her story of the early 1900s, "The Uncharted Heart," from the deathbed of George Dewey Macoun, age 99. As a young cartographer, he was sent to map remote regions of Ontario. Although he had married Frieda Eckert in the city of Kingston, Onatrio, he fell in love with a native woman, Marguerite, a widow who lived alone by a distant lake he persisted in omitting from his surveys. His dual life nurtures a secret, as do his maps.

George Harrar's story, "The 5:22," takes a daily train departure and endows the mundane with mystery: Walter Mason, a mechanical engineer at MIT, becomes fascinated with a woman who always wears a head scarf. It blows off one day, he sees she lacks her right ear, and from then on, she stops catching the 5:22. Preoccupied with her, Mason's orderly life goes into a spin, reality warps and he can't even depend on the train to let him off at his own stop.

"Save the Reaper," by Alice Munro, appears in both anthologies. Anyone who has read Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" will recognize the premise: characters start off on an innocent car trip, make the wrong turn, and their lives are put in danger. It's Munro's heart of darkness in rural Canada.

The other piece appearing in both books is Jhumpa Lahiri's marvelously layered "Interpreter of Maladies," set in India. Mr. Kapasi, a taxi driver and tour guide, takes the wealthy American Das family to the Sun Temple at Konarak one day. He is also, he tells Mrs. Das, a medical translator. As the day progresses, he begins to think she is attracted to him. The story hinges on this growing secret.

Pam Houston's river-rafting adventure story, "The Best Girlfriend You Never Had," about a near-lesbian experience, appears in BASS, and a far stronger companion piece, "Cataract," pits the same characters against the Colorado's rapids in the O. Henry collection.

Another contributor to both books is Annie Proulx, with "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World" in BASS. This story, as with many Tan chose, runs long and reads more like a narrative summary for a novel than a compelling piece of short fiction. More immediate was Larry Dark's choice for the O. Henry, "The Mud Below," about a young rodeo bullrider coming up against his mortality.

In past years, I preferred BASS because each collection's guest editor brought a fresh focus. The O. Henry anthology always seemed less adventurous, more long-winded. Too, I've never understood the point of prizes. This year's jury included Sherman Alexie, Stephen King and Lorrie Moore. Would three other writers have chosen three other winners?

The first-prize story, Peter Baida's "A Nurse's Story," tells of 69-year-old Mary McDonald's death by cancer. Using several points of view, he spans many years. She is a helpless old woman now, but as each episode builds, Mary's life, work and generous heart are developed. Cary Holladay's second-prize story, "Merry-Go-Sorry," also uses a multiple point of view approach in its attempt to make sense of a 17-year-old boy on trial for three murders in Arkansas.

Among other selections, "Sea Oak," George Saunders' amazing, surreal story of surviving the ghetto, is serious, sad, hilarious and outrageous by turns. To say more would spoil the fun. Another tremendous rough ride is Gerald Reilly's poignant story about an actor with AIDS, "Nixon Under the Bodhi Tree."

Michael Cunningham uses an effective second-person point of view to draw in readers of "Mister Brother," Chaim Potok invokes the more novelistic omniscient for "Moon," and Michael Chabon refuses to let a reader get comfortable in his creepy "Son of Wolfman," shifting between several viewpoints. This year, the variety presented in the O. Henry collection makes it far more interesting and unconventional than usual.