by Ryan Boudinot

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003

edited by Dave Eggers

(Houghton Mifflin) $13

Ryan Boudinot received his M.F.A. at Bennington College and a B.A. in creative writing from Evergreen State College. He has written a novel about selling ice cream. He lives in Seattle.

--p. 321 of The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003

In addition, Ryan Boudinot (henceforth "the writer") would like to comment on some of the other pieces included in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003 (henceforth "BANR03"). While pleased to see his story "The Littlest Hitler" included in the second volume of this annual series, he was nonetheless a bit crestfallen when he read some of the other contributions, which he quite honestly considers far superior.

For starters, there is fellow Seattleite David Drury's "Things We Knew When the House Caught Fire." You are encouraged to immediately flip to this story and read it first, especially if you are into stories about firefighters who cry. The writer would like to acknowledge that he has recently gotten to know Drury socially, and here's the freaky thing: David Drury happened to already be friends with the writer's next-door neighbors.

Here's another six-degrees thing the writer finds interesting, and which you can be forgiven for finding completely trivial: Amanda Holzer, whose story "Love and Other Catastrophes: A Mix Tape" is included in the present volume, used to be the roommate of the writer's cousin. (And wrap your head around this: The writer's cousin is a double cousin, meaning that the writer's mother's sister married the writer's father's brother and produced said cousin. Brace yourself for the twist: The writer's cousin is herself a writer.) At any rate, the Holzer story, composed entirely of song titles, is one of those clever ideas that seems so obvious that everyone who reads it slaps their forehead for not thinking of it first.

There's some fine journalism within the pages of BANR03 as well: George Packer's "How Susie Bayer's T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama's Back" (an article of clothing donated to a New York thrift store is stalked to its final customer in Africa); Mark Bowden's "Tales of the Tyrant" (about life as Saddam Hussein); and "The Pretenders," by Chuck Klosterman (about life as a Guns N' Roses tribute band). The writer is relieved that certain of his attempts at nonfiction, like the piece about how much he likes Billy Joel, did not get included in BANR03.

Sherman Alexie's excellent essay on Sacagawea reminds the writer of the funniest comment he's ever heard about an author photo--in this case, Alexie's photo as it appears on the back of First Indian on the Moon. The comment happened during a seminar at Evergreen, when a fellow student said, "He looks like he was really into Zeppelin in high school." At the time, the writer found this comment particularly astute and worthy of preservation in his notebook.

Evergreen segue: The Lynda Barry cartoon that appears in the book, which concerns how people's houses all smell different, is real funny shit.

The writer would like to pause to reflect that the contributors' notes for BANR03 were solicited from the contributors themselves, with little to no editorial guidance from the fine people at Houghton Mifflin. The contributors generally provided their bios in third person, perhaps giving readers the sense that someone else wrote them. The writer acknowledges that writing about one's self in third person is a creepy, disorienting exercise he's not looking forward to doing again.

The writer also apologizes for the fact that this meandering "review," solicited by The Stranger, is, tonally, a hokey satire of/tribute to/rip-off of certain narrative strategies of BANR03 editor Dave Eggers1 , and he in no way intends for it to be consulted/deferred to when determining whether the volume at hand is worthy of purchase.

The writer finally wishes to thank his mother, for buying multiple copies, in hardback even.

1 And, perhaps heavy-handedly, and for no good reason, and w/r/t this footnote at least, D. F. Wallace.