She’s the Best Local writer Anthony hits two major compilations BY SAM PFEIFLE
	JESSICA ANTHONY Reading from The Best American Nonrequired Reading (Houghton Mifflin) and The Best New American Voices (Harcourt) | Longfellow Books, Portland | Oct 20 | 7 pm | 207.772.4045

If you’re charting Jessica Anthony’s career path, make sure your Excel spreadsheet goes all the way to big-time literary heavyweight. She ain’t there yet, but two newly released short-story compilations have things pointing decidedly upward. Issued by venerable publishing houses Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt, respectively, The Best American Nonrequired Reading and The Best New American Voices are two of the yardsticks by which rising talent is gauged, and Anthony measured to both up in 2005.

Nonrequired Reading is the cooler of the two. The series is edited by Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s guru and leader of the new school of American literature by most accounts. Plus, it’s got an introduction by Beck. Yep, Beck — just about the hippest guy on the planet (by my account). At this point, he’s become so huge that he’ll likely find himself "required" listening in history of music classes two decades from now, but Beck once defined "nonrequired" listening, which is probably why I wore out my Mellow Gold tape after about 10,000 listens in my Walkman going up and down the hill to college. His introduction, where he puts the included stories and vignettes (and cartoons) in the company of Wim Enders, Sonic Youth, and Philip K. Dick ought to make Anthony blush. But she’s too confident a writer for that.

Her piece, "The Death of Mustango Salvaje," is a 24-pager that originally appeared in McSweeney’s. Like much of today’s short fiction, and like her story that appears in New American Voices, it is in the first person, but it is also in the third person, and is refreshingly free from an autobiographical feel.

The protagonist is a female bullfighter, the best bullfighter of any gender in these parts, the Mustango Salvaje (Wild Mustang) of the story’s title. But she is also Cristina, her father’s daughter, and when her persona seems too much to be true, Wild Mustang becomes other to her, and so her death can make for a happy ending.

What’s best here is Cristina’s voice, speaking in clipped sentences like it’s been translated from the Spanish. It has a lilt to it, too, a musicality reflected in the story’s organization: sections headed uno, dos, tres, and cuatro, like a Mexican band leader counting off time. When the last of the four beats comes to an end, the song begins. Here, Cristina’s life, we must believe, only begins once its prelude has finished. She is only a little battered from the wait.

For waiting, however, no one can beat the hero of "The Rust Preventer," the story Anthony has contributed to New American Voices. This collection is more of a literary affair, somewhat creative for the youth involved, but edited by the Pulitzer-winning Jane Smiley and the product of "fresh writing from the top writing programs," so more staid. Still, "Preventer" could have appeared in the Eggers book and "Mustango" could have appeared in Smiley’s book just the same. Anthony’s first person is this time male, horribly alone on a post-war Asian island, whether he’s insane or really was put there to evaluate how fast things rust is unclear. Also, he’s in love with a monkey and becomes jealous when she leaves him for another monkey.

Again, Anthony separates herself with creativity. Where, again, most of the stories that surround hers have the whiff of autobiography (instructions for a guy who’s turned 30 on growing up, portraits of foreign cultures that seem like the results of travel journals), Anthony surprises with absurdity that remains recognizable for its humanity.

Of course, on neither back cover is Anthony mentioned by name in the hype-laden promo blurbs. Who makes that decision? Who writes that copy? Some marketing type, likely. Maybe Anthony’s residence outside of big-city writing circles hurts her name recognition. Maybe it has no effect. Maybe she just hasn’t published a collection yet with McSweeny’s, as Amanda Davis has, or founded her own radio network, as Al Franken has, or won the Pulitzer Prize, like Jhumpa Lahiri — thus is her company in these collections.

Maybe it’s only a matter of time.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam@phx.com