The Best of the West 2: New Short Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri

This omnibus essentially accedes to the romantic notion that the American West connotes adventure, men and women with untamed passions and nature at its starkest. Although the Thomases (he co-edited Sudden Fiction ; she is a freelance writer) claim to have culled the 17 stories from 175 publications, nearly a third are from eminent national magazines such as the Atlantic . These particular entries are so superior as to produce a lopsided collection, a backward salute to the glory of already celebrated authors like Jim Harrison. Next to the measured poetics of Louise Erdrich, the belabored, workshop-style prose that afflicts many pieces is especially infelicitous: ``Emily wept, but her tears froze cold as penny nails and her upper lip seemed candlewaxed by her nose.'' Compared with Rick Bass's ``Choteau,'' a tough-minded portrait of a rough-and-tumble man facing middle age, other protagonists are drawn sentimentally, like Olive Ghiselin's elderly woman who sets out ``to make a brew that would preserve her from the teeth and claws of time.'' (Sept.)