Sadie Stein is deputy editor of the Paris Review. Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story was just published by Picador.
The anthology Object Lessons is at first glance straightforward: Lorin Stein and I went to 20 masters of the short story and asked each one to choose his or her favorite from the Paris Review's 60-year archive. Then each person wrote an introduction explaining what he or she learned from the story. From the beginning, it seemed like a sure-fire concept--a great collection of stories, curated by some of our favorite working writers.
True, but the process ended up being so much more than I had anticipated: it was a window not just into what makes a memorable story, but how writers relate to literature, and to each other.
While some of the most famous stories from the archive were chosen quickly, so were lesser-known treasures that the authors remembered from their original publication. It was exciting to know that the pieces had made such impressions on writers who would go on to great careers of their own. But the process became even more pleasurable once we started tracking down the authors whose work had been selected. They were uniformly delighted, often touched. I can't pretend the morass of securing permissions was all fun--many of the Review's early records are, to put it mildly, sketchy, as often based on gentleman's agreements as paper contracts.
Some of it was drudgery--but, as one agent put it, as she graciously gave us permission to publish a story by her late client: "This will keep his work alive and available to a new generation." If the anthology taught me nothing else, it showed the power of veteran writers to inspire new ones, and--equally--how much their appreciation and gratitude repay the debt, as the years go by. Talk about an object lesson.