The Best American Mystery Stories by Robert Crais

Author:Robert Crais [Robert Crais]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781858417
Publisher: Head of Zeus

Nathan Oates’s stories have appeared in The Antioch Review, Witness, the Alaska Quarterly Review, and other literary magazines. His stories have been anthologized in The Best American Mystery Stories 2008, the 70th anniversary issue of The Antioch Review, and Fifty-Two Stories. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Seton Hall University, where he also directs the Poetry-in-the-Round reading series. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and kids.

*I wrote “Looking for Service” as I was finishing the first draft of a novel, thinking I could go back to the beginning and add this new voice, that the novel would now have two narrators, or maybe even three, or four. What I really wanted was a release from being caught in one character’s head for so long and, maybe because of that desire for release, I wrote this story quickly, finishing a draft in two sittings. This is not that uncommon for me and sometimes after these quick first drafts the basic structure is in place, if in need of major revision. Other times the results are terrible, and I put the stories away. This story was the rarest sort: when I read it over it seemed nearly finished. Out of the detail of the “Thank You, George Bush” sign jammed into his front yard, the narrator’s personality – his bitterness, his anger, his tenderness – was clear, and the other characters, the situation, the setting, all seemed to fit naturally around him. The only part that didn’t quite work was the ending. I wrote five different endings quickly, each progressively darker, until I finally got the characters down into that room beneath the brothel, and then, with the prompting of a few readers, I got that American girl up on the stage with that whip in her hand. Then I could see what the story was really about: the divides that separate us from people, divides of age, ideology, wealth, and the persistent desire to cross those divides, to care for the people on the other side, or to hurt them, or sometimes both. After finishing the story I saw – or, rather, my wife saw – that this wasn’t part of a novel, but a short story. As ever, I am indebted to my parents for their seemingly endless supply of stories that have so often provided the spark for my writing.

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