Zoetrope: a collection of some of the best
& most refined short fiction

By María Eugenia Guerra

Zoetrope: All Story.
New York: Harcourt, Inc.
2000. 356 pages.

There is some exquisite, highly refined writing in film director Francis Ford Coppola's literary magazine, Zoetrope: All Story.
Established in 1997 as a literary journal, Zoetrope publishes the brightest and the best short fiction, for the purpose of, according to Coppola, "literary cultivation."
This anthology of some of the journal's best work is edited by Adrienne Brodeur and Samantha Schnee.
Two of the most powerful stories -- powerful as to narrative, craft, and resolution -- were commissioned by Zoetrope in story ideas tendered to writers. One was Sara Powers' "The Baker's Wife," for which Zoetrope provided the basic story line of "a love story involving people who are having the same dreams." Powers is a New Englander who has had her work published in Story, The Village Voice, VLS, and Details.
The other commissioned story was "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" by Melissa Bank. Bank is the author of a collection of short stories of the same name, a book that enjoyed 14 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Bank's story is so charming and well-written that it has a dizzying pace to it.
Another gem is Emily Perkins' "Her New Life." Perkins, a Londoner who was born in New Zealand, is the author of the collection of short stories called Not Her Real Name. Her writing in "Her New Life" is ordinary and yet fluid and beautiful. You might guess at the ending of the story, but you just want to put off getting there because as long as you don't you are reading her really good writing and you want to enjoy the trip.
Robert Olen Butler's "Fair Warning" is also one of this collection's best stories, evidencing Butler's ability to build a clever, many faceted story that peaks and maintains momentum and then goes exactly where the reader did not predict. Butler is no newcomer to excellent writing. His collection of short stories, A Good Scent from A Strange Mountain, won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
A good short story rivets you with quirky characters crossing paths in twist-of-fate imagery doled out in the smallest and most concentrated quantities. Those small doses of imagery are evoked with precisely the right words. A good short story isn't just good writing. It is a story that takes the reader out of the armchair or the slumber-time bedboard and into an engaging observation of people and events that turn on a dime. A good short story surprises. Nearly every story in this collection does just that.