Let’s everyone stop mentioning the supposed death of the American short story. I don’t know which louse in the academy started that foul rumor, but not only is the short story not dead, it’s never even been close to sick. Despite the recent successes of Jhumpa Lahiri and Adam Haslett, among others, an immensely skillful story writer such as Keith Morris still must settle on a small university press that neither pays nor publicizes. Morris’s stirring debut collection, The Best Seats in the House and Other Stories, will not find lovers of the short story; lovers of the short story must find it.

Morris is heir to the Richard Ford of Rock Springs; he has that rare gift of writing truthfully about people we know and care for: the commoners who are forced to make their own luck in life, confused fathers and sons coming to terms with each other, blue-collar husbands and wives trying to hold on to what remains.

To read the rest of this piece, please purchase this issue of the Believer online or at your local bookseller.

—William Giraldi