A Personal Anthology, by Brittany Menjivar

This isn’t my attempt to establish a personal canon, nor is it necessarily a list of my personal favorites — if so, we’d see a few repeat offenders here. Rather, here are twelve stories that, when I look back, stand out to me as signposts in my literary journey, schooling me in style and guiding me toward themes that would later resurface in my own work. Reading each one of them brought about a revelation—a moment where I realized, “Oh, so you can do that?”

‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’ by J. D. Salinger (First published in The New Yorker, January 1948. Anthologized in 55 Short Stories from the New Yorker, Simon & Schuster 1949 and Salinger’s Nine Stories, Little, Brown 1953)

I reread this one nearly every month. It’s hard to talk about it without falling into hyperbole; I already called it “the Great American Novel” in another interview, even though it’s just seven pages long. What I’ll say is this: in those seven pages, Salinger offers a strikingly comprehensive portrait of living—and loving someone—with mental health struggles, precisely PTSD in this case. Despite the intense subject matter (and tragic ending), it’s not all doom and gloom: Salinger gives us some amusing zingers like “Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948” and “Sex Is Fun—Or Hell.” (Obligatory fun fact, since this is where two of my worlds collide: the band Blur, an oft-cited inspiration of mine, originally wanted to name themselves Seymour after this story’s protagonist.)

‘The Library of Babel’ by Jorge Luis Borges (First published in Borges’ El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, Editorial Sur 1941. Reprinted in Borges’ Ficciones, Editorial Sur 1944.)

‘The Library of Babel’ may not be Borges’ most riveting story from a narrative perspective, but I find it most compelling conceptually. I spent hours exploring every corner of my college library stacks, so the thought of a library that contains every combination of letters in the human language is just too thrilling. There’s something exciting and reassuring about the idea that the perfect words are out there; you just have to claim them as yours. (Bonus: a curious soul programmed a virtual version of the library. Check it out here… the potential for writing prompts is endless.)

‘Uncontrollable, Irrelevant’ by Avigayl Sharp (Published in The Paris Review, Winter 2022)

Most of us had “that one weird teacher.” I had two: a publicly outed Neo-Nazi organizer and an alleged sexual predator. Maybe that’s why Avigayl Sharp’s “Uncontrollable, Irrelevant” struck a chord with me. You’ve got to give it to the Paris Review for opening their Winter 2022 issue with this whammy: two old chums pay a friendly visit to a high school teacher who was canceled for pedophilia. (He’s no Humbert Humbert figure: this guy was preying on young boys.) Beneath the dark humor lurks an urgent question: What are we willing to excuse in exchange for affection?

‘Secretary’ by Mary Gaitskill (Published in Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior, Simon & Schuster, 1988)

I recently witnessed a bizarre dogpile in the comments of an Instagram post. A teenage girl had admitted that she didn’t entirely hate being catcalled; adult women pounced on her as if she were a reactionary sleeper agent. Mary Gaitskill would never. ‘Secretary’ recognizes that all too often, young women are forced to reckon with sexuality and subjectivity under less than ideal circumstances. The plot is simple, even archetypal: a lawyer makes advances upon his young secretary; she responds with alternating desire and disgust. While the 2002 film adaptation concludes with a wish fulfilment fantasy, Gaitskill refuses to give her teen protagonist a happy ending; yet she treats her kindly by refusing to castigate or categorize her. James Spader’s movie-star smirk is nowhere to be seen here; we hear more about the lawyer’s hands than we do his face. 

‘Cat World’ by Elle Nash (Published in Guernica, October 2020)

Elle Nash is one of my favorite contemporary writers reckoning with the untraditional ways we seek out and experience intimacy. Stumbling upon ‘Cat World’ was a revelation for me—not only were Internet lingo and strange subcultures suitable subjects for a short story; publications like Guernica were excited to read them. If you’ve ever engaged with a hyper-specific message board or chatroom (as I did in my day, active in the Nancy Drew PC Game community as well as the American Girl Doll fandom), this will resonate with you. If you need further convincing: much of the story consists of dialogue between users named “ExxonMobil6” and “dErAnGeDkItTy69.”

‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald (First published in The Smart Set, June 2022. Anthologized in Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age, Charles Scribner’s Sons 1922)

In the wake of all the opulent parties that the 2013 Great Gatsby film inspired, I think we’ve collectively forgotten how hilarious F. Scott Fitzgerald could be. A rich little schoolboy named Percy invites a different friend over for spring break each year. At the end of his trip, he’s put to death to keep him from revealing that Percy’s family gets its wealth from… you can probably take a guess. Our protagonist, one of Percy’s victims-to-be, tries to evade his fated demise. This one’s a good reminder that you can make an absurd premise work, as long as you commit to the bit.

‘Adrien Brody’ by Marie Calloway (First self-published in 2011. Anthologized in what purpose did I serve in your life, Tyrant Books 2013.)

The original wave of alt-lit is often considered male-focused, but Marie Calloway is one of its most iconic authors, proving that even mundane topics can make for insightful writing if penned with brutal honesty and an eye for style. Today’s autofiction scribes should know that they’re walking down a path she bravely paved—when her book what purpose did I serve in your life was released, her diaristic introspection was considered frivolous by some critics. ‘Adrien Brody’ describes a dalliance between two writers—Calloway as autofictionalized narrator and a blogger/essayist assigned the actor’s name as a pseudonym. Not only does it brilliantly capture the inner monologue of a young woman dissecting how her appearance influences others’ perceptions of her—it’s a window into the way curious, hyper-online writers communicate with each other. Reading it as a teen, I dreamed of corresponding with my literary objects of affection the way she did. Revisiting it, the frissons of excitement she feels reading their work and exchanging messages with them are pleasantly familiar. 

‘The Bloody Chamber’ by Angela Carter (Published in The Bloody Chamber, Gollancz, 1979)

At this point, fairytale retellings are themselves a tale as old as time. Carter’s forays into feminist horror are enchanting and ever-relevant. While each chapter in The Bloody Chamber is brilliant, the titular story is a personal favorite, as it riffs off my beloved Bluebeard legend. Rather than punish our heroine with some disturbing fate to make the story more “adult” or “modern,” Carter gives her a happy ending, although she does bear the mark of her past trauma (quite literally). (For another, more recent spin on Bluebeard, check out Bluebeard’s Castle by Anna Biller, director of The Love Witch.) 

‘The Whipping’ by Wally Wood (Published in ShockSuspenStories Vol. 1 #14, EC Comics 1954)

Since “elevated horror” has become a buzzy phrase, some have opined that horror has only recently taken a turn toward allegorical (and sometimes literal) explorations of social issues. Not so—since its early days, writers have turned to the genre’s terrifying tropes to shed light on real-world demons. In EC Comics story “The Whipping,” a white man tries to kill his daughter’s Mexican-American boyfriend and ends up murdering her. The story certainly threatened the status quo when it was published—in fact, EC EIC William Gaines was called before the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency in 1954 to defend its value. 

‘Moon’ by Esther Yi (Published in The Paris Review, Summer 2022)

I began my writing career as a teen music journalist, and my fascination with parasocial relationships (see: Parasocialite) largely stems from the artist-fan interactions I observed (not to mention the occasional flickers of infatuation I had to stomp out in order to do my job well). Thus, Moon immediately seized my attention. As so many of us do, I love the intersection of highbrow and lowbrow, and Moon is as good as it gets in that category: Yi records the vicissitudes of a K-Pop fan’s obsession with striking seriousness (all while maintaining a powerful first-person POV).

‘Pearls’ by Michael Cunningham (Published in The Paris Review, Winter 1982)

Not only is Michael Cunningham a master of the short story—he’s one of the mentors who helped me find my own voice in undergrad. I could’ve put “White Angel” or “A Wild Swan” here, but there’s something about surreal gem “Pearls” that stands out as especially striking to me. After losing his lover, a young man notices loose pearls from her favorite necklace turning up in increasingly surprising hiding places around his home. The best jokes don’t need to be explained; neither do the best metaphors. 

‘Captain Hook at Eton’ by J. M. Barrie (Published in The Times, July 1927)

This is my wild-card pick. I love how Barrie treats his characters as living, breathing entities whose movements he’s simply recording rather than directing. Captain Hook at Eton is evidence of this. Written in the form of an address (intended for the titular boys’ school, of course), it delves into the fearsome foe’s life in English high society before he took to the seven seas. It was published in 1927, fourteen years after Peter Pan; considered alongside earlier works such as the Peter Pan play and “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens,” it’s a testament to the way the same stories can have a hold over us for years, changing as we do. Admittedly, this bit of apocrypha might not be particularly interesting to you if you’re not a certified Pan fan… but I place myself firmly in that camp, so en garde. Although my work tends to lean toward darker topics, I would love to weave a tale that conjures up a Barrie-esque sense of childlike wonder someday.

Brittany Menjivar’s projects include prose and poetry collection Parasocialite, short thriller film “Fragile.com,” and literary reading series Car Crash Collective (co-founded with Erin Satterthwaite). She serves as a columnist for the Los Angeles Review of Books; she has also contributed to Coveteur, V Magazine, Document Journal, the Creative Independent, Artillery, and the Contemporary Art Review of Los Angeles, among other publications.

* You can browse the full searchable archives of A Personal Anthology, with over 3,000 story recommendations, at www.apersonalanthology.com. 

* A Personal Anthology is curated by Jonathan Gibbs, author of two novels, Randall, and The Large Door, and a book-length poem, Spring Journal. He teaches on the MA/MFA Creative Writing at City, University of London.

* And if you are interested in contributing your own Personal Anthology to the project, then please let me know by replying to this email. I’m always on the lookout for guest editors!

* Finally, if you enjoy this Substack you might enjoy Creative Digest, a collaborative Substack produced by the Creative Writing team at City, and to which I contribute. Read and subscribe here.