I found it especially challenging to choose a favorite Lorrie Moore story to include on this list, though I knew she’d be on it from the get-go. There are so many wonderful options: ‘You’re Ugly, Too’ or ‘People Like That Are the Only People Here’ or ‘Thank You for Having Me’ could’ve all easily taken this spot. But, for me, ‘Dance in America’ is Lorrie’s finest story. It’s one that makes me a little teary even to think about, if I’m being honest. The narrator is a disenchanted dancer visiting a college friend, his wife, and their young son, Eugene, who has cystic fibrosis. Without giving too much away, I will say that there’s a moment in which the narrator makes a promise to Eugene that she later, inadvertently, breaks, and her realization of this is one of the most gutting moments in all of Moore’s work. This story, it should also be said, is counterbalanced by Moore’s signature wit, containing one of the most hysterical anecdotes in all of fiction: a story about raccoons catching fire in the chimney.
First published in The New Yorker, Jun 1993, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in Birds of America, Knopf/Faber, 1998, and The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore, Knopf/Faber 2010
A Personal Anthology 