Tom Perrotta

As guest editor of the 2012 edition of the annual anthology "Best American Short Stories," Tom Perrotta read more than 100 stories in order to choose the 20 that would appear in the book. In our conversation, Perrotta discusses a historic tension in American fiction. On one side are writers like Raymond Carver -- the minimalists, the dirty realists -- who wrote in pared-down language about working class people; on the other, the maximalists like Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, who emphasized style, intellectual exploration and bulk.

As guest editor of the 2012 edition of the annual anthology "Best American Short Stories," Tom Perrotta read more than 100 stories in order to choose the 20 that would appear in the book. In our conversation, Perrotta discusses a historic tension in American fiction. On one side are writers like Raymond Carver -- the minimalists, the dirty realists -- who wrote in pared-down language about working class people; on the other, the maximalists like Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, who emphasized style, intellectual exploration and bulk.

THE LEFTOVERS A Novel Tom Perrotta St. Martin's Press: 356 pp., $25.99 The two most moving scenes in Tom Perrotta's sixth novel, "The Leftovers," come late in the book. In the first, Kevin Garvey - abandoned husband, distracted father, mayor of the affluent suburb of Mapleton - tells a woman he's been dating that he's just heard from his college-age son for the first time in months. "Were you close?" she asks, herself a bit distracted. "He was my little boy, I was always so proud of him," Kevin answers and bursts into tears.

What does it take to get into " Best American Short Stories "? We'll ask Tom Perrotta, the guest editor of this year's collection, when we talk to him at 10 a.m. PDT Tuesday. Save this link; the video will appear here. Perrotta, whose most recent novel is "The Leftovers," is the author of "Election," "Little Children" and "The Abstinence Teacher. " His books often take slices of suburban American life and give them a unique, even hysterical, spin: affairs, sex education, a hyper-ambitious student council presidential candidate.

What does it take to get into " Best American Short Stories "? We'll ask Tom Perrotta, the guest editor of this year's collection, when we talk to him at 10 a.m. PDT Tuesday. Save this link; the video will appear here. Perrotta, whose most recent novel is "The Leftovers," is the author of "Election," "Little Children" and "The Abstinence Teacher. " His books often take slices of suburban American life and give them a unique, even hysterical, spin: affairs, sex education, a hyper-ambitious student council presidential candidate.

Don't touch that! Not with your hands, not with your mouth. Not if it's someone else's, and no, not even if it's your own. These are hardly the lessons Ruth Ramsey wants to pass on to her high school students, but such are the responsibilities of "The Abstinence Teacher." Ruth is the sex ed teacher in Stonewood Heights, which was once a typical affluent, blue-state suburb, full of educated parents, SUVs and Subarus, latte shops and well-attended soccer games.

Some drank themselves nearly to death. Others spiraled downward on their own. Still others spent years spinning in neutral, cursing their studio overlords. By and large, literary writers working for Hollywood have not had great luck at it. The character of Barton Fink, the pretentious playwright of the Coen brothers film who provokes a murder and a fiery inferno without producing much decent dialogue, is a comic exaggeration of a long, uneasy tradition. Until Tom Perrotta came along, that is.

BAD HAIRCUT: Stories of the Seventies by Tom Perrotta (Bridge Works Publishing: $18.95; 208 pp.). Watergate, the oil crisis, disco, international terrorism, the Brady Bunch--no, the Seventies are best forgotten. For those who can, at least; forgetfulness isn't possible for Tom Perrotta, a child of that uninspired decade who's able, providentially, to turn Seventies dross into Nineties gold.

The deal Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa ("Little Miss Sunshine" and "Election") option "The Wishbones" by Tom Perrotta, his poignant 1997 comic novel about the romantic problems of a wedding musician. The players Berger and Yerxa producing, in a deal set up at Warner Independent Pictures. Perrotta, writing the screenplay, is represented on literary rights by Maria Massie and on film rights by Sylvie Rabineau. The novel is published by Berkley Books. The back story Hollywood is famous for creative teams, like Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

The little children in Tom Perrotta's novel are a bunch of 3-year-olds who play at the same suburban park. The title might as well refer to their parents, who share their tedious egotism and behave like seventh-graders on an unsupervised lunch break. But don't we all. Perrotta has crafted a sly tale of children trapped in adult bodies, coming to terms with lives as repetitive and incomprehensible as any grade schooler's. Perrotta's adults aren't unsupervised, of course.

THE LEFTOVERS A Novel Tom Perrotta St. Martin's Press: 356 pp., $25.99 The two most moving scenes in Tom Perrotta's sixth novel, "The Leftovers," come late in the book. In the first, Kevin Garvey - abandoned husband, distracted father, mayor of the affluent suburb of Mapleton - tells a woman he's been dating that he's just heard from his college-age son for the first time in months. "Were you close?" she asks, herself a bit distracted. "He was my little boy, I was always so proud of him," Kevin answers and bursts into tears.

The deal Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa ("Little Miss Sunshine" and "Election") option "The Wishbones" by Tom Perrotta, his poignant 1997 comic novel about the romantic problems of a wedding musician. The players Berger and Yerxa producing, in a deal set up at Warner Independent Pictures. Perrotta, writing the screenplay, is represented on literary rights by Maria Massie and on film rights by Sylvie Rabineau. The novel is published by Berkley Books. The back story Hollywood is famous for creative teams, like Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

Some drank themselves nearly to death. Others spiraled downward on their own. Still others spent years spinning in neutral, cursing their studio overlords. By and large, literary writers working for Hollywood have not had great luck at it. The character of Barton Fink, the pretentious playwright of the Coen brothers film who provokes a murder and a fiery inferno without producing much decent dialogue, is a comic exaggeration of a long, uneasy tradition. Until Tom Perrotta came along, that is.

Don't touch that! Not with your hands, not with your mouth. Not if it's someone else's, and no, not even if it's your own. These are hardly the lessons Ruth Ramsey wants to pass on to her high school students, but such are the responsibilities of "The Abstinence Teacher." Ruth is the sex ed teacher in Stonewood Heights, which was once a typical affluent, blue-state suburb, full of educated parents, SUVs and Subarus, latte shops and well-attended soccer games.

TODD FIELD didn't think there was a movie in Tom Perrotta's "Little Children." He believed the novel could be turned into an entire miniseries. After discussions for an eight-part HBO adaptation didn't pan out, Field condensed Perrotta's book into a taut feature film, opening Oct. 6, that still included most of the book's suburban unrest plots and even some of its comic digressions -- with one significant exception. "When you adapt a novel, you have to wage war on it.

The little children in Tom Perrotta's novel are a bunch of 3-year-olds who play at the same suburban park. The title might as well refer to their parents, who share their tedious egotism and behave like seventh-graders on an unsupervised lunch break. But don't we all. Perrotta has crafted a sly tale of children trapped in adult bodies, coming to terms with lives as repetitive and incomprehensible as any grade schooler's. Perrotta's adults aren't unsupervised, of course.

Tom Perrotta has a wicked sense of the divine. In his able hands, stories that might otherwise seem cliched pull us in before we realize it; characters whom we might otherwise avoid become icons for our veneration. If Perrotta's name isn't familiar, his "Election," first the book and then the movie, may be more so.

TODD FIELD didn't think there was a movie in Tom Perrotta's "Little Children." He believed the novel could be turned into an entire miniseries. After discussions for an eight-part HBO adaptation didn't pan out, Field condensed Perrotta's book into a taut feature film, opening Oct. 6, that still included most of the book's suburban unrest plots and even some of its comic digressions -- with one significant exception. "When you adapt a novel, you have to wage war on it.

Tom Perrotta has a wicked sense of the divine. In his able hands, stories that might otherwise seem cliched pull us in before we realize it; characters whom we might otherwise avoid become icons for our veneration. If Perrotta's name isn't familiar, his "Election," first the book and then the movie, may be more so.

BAD HAIRCUT: Stories of the Seventies by Tom Perrotta (Bridge Works Publishing: $18.95; 208 pp.). Watergate, the oil crisis, disco, international terrorism, the Brady Bunch--no, the Seventies are best forgotten. For those who can, at least; forgetfulness isn't possible for Tom Perrotta, a child of that uninspired decade who's able, providentially, to turn Seventies dross into Nineties gold.