Introduction
My first job only lasted two weeks. Fourteen years old, delivering newspapers to homes in Southeast Queens. Two weeks of getting started later than I should have and missing more than a few homes altogether and I got fired by my boss. I didn’t feel too bad about it. I deserved to lose the gig. But I did still get paid for the work I’d done. I cleared thirty dollars. That seemed like a lot to me in 1986. I can’t remember what I did with most of the money. Pizza, Big League Chew bubble gum, and video games, probably. But I do remember one thing I spent my money on—the first book I bought with my own cash.
It was a mass-market paperback of Pet Sematary by Stephen King. It’s about how far a parent would go to bring their child back to life. Touch of Frankenstein, but with spectral magic instead of quasi-science. I enjoyed the book, but its major themes escaped me at that age. I was a long way from being a parent, so I couldn’t grasp the depth and breadth of that kind of agony or love. Nevertheless, I felt the pride of owning the book itself. I’d read it, but I’d also earned it. The crack in its spine—a white sliver running from top to bottom—served as proof of the hours I’d spent with it. It was mine.
Of course, these days I read ebooks and love audiobooks and yet there’s a sentimental side of me that hopes many of you will be reading these stories as a paperback journal you clutch in your hands, carry with you to places where there’s no WiFi, no outlet where you can plug in your device. Good Lord, even as I type that sentence, I can hear my curmudgeonly tone. Picture myself wagging a finger and squinting my eyes in judgement. Yeah, okay. I’m guilty. But the reason isn’t merely technophobia. Maybe it’s just an indication of how much I want you to—how much I hope you will—love the stories in this issue as much as I do.
Being invited to fulfill the role of guest editor at Ploughshares is intimidating. Will I do right by the journal? It’s been around since 1971 and more than made its name. Imagine being the one to turn out a bum issue. Letting down the side, as they say. But then I had the good fortune of enjoying an embarrassment of riches. Story after story hit me with something surprising, something new, and yet each one returned me to the reason I read at all: an emotional connection—whether that’s with a character, a theme, a way with language. The good stuff elicits an emotional response. These stories did that for me every time. That’s why I picked them. More than anything else, that was my criteria for selection.
I still have that copy of Pet Sematary. It sits on the shelf in my office. The first book I bought; far from the last. My hope is that this issue of Ploughshares, if not the first book you’ve ever bought, becomes one of the many you come to love, that you return to regularly over the years of your reading life. The stories here—like all the best fiction—will repay your attention, your devotion. May they be with you for the rest of your life.
