Short Stories

I have to say that after reading some of the assigned stories from The Best American Short Stories, the company who publishes these things may want to get a new editor. I love Stephen King books, I find them compelling, dark, and has some great twists and turns, but I don't want to every story in this goddamn book to read just like his. "The Toga Party" is a terrible story TERRIBLE I don't know if I can stress this enough. I'm not just talking about the melancholy suicide ending that's just more of a personal preference on how I like a tale to end. What I'm talking about is the lackluster writing that wasted an hour of my life that I will never get back. John Barth might be a good author, there are some techniques in his way of explaining events that go on in his story, or explanation of character's back story and what not, but when it comes to dialog, or maybe trying to find out what are characters are thinking is completely asinine. Every one of these people as soon as they open their mouths or turn on their thought bubbles become one-dimensional cut outs. The main characters, Dick and Sue the only thing that seems to run through their minds is death, death, death, money, money, money. Over and over again. Sam Bailey? His wife died, that's Barth's idea of deep character plot, that's it. The ending is the icing on the crap cake for me. It's not the fact that the characters Dick and Sue killed themselves (they were so boring and lame I was kind of glad to see them go) it was how they were written off. There was no alluding to their little death-pact, no hint. Two healthy, happy people just deciding to off themselves because they're getting old? Because Sam stabbed himself at the party and that brought the whole evening down? Stupid. It's a weak attemped of a shabby writer to try to throw in some shock value in a boring story. I would not recommend these 20-odd pages to anybody.