"To Buffalo Eastward" by Gabriel Bump

January 1, 2022

This story was chosen by Jesmyn Ward (whose books, all of them, are incredible) for The Best American Short Stories 2021. It was first published in McSweeney’s.

In the back pages of the book, Bump said he got the idea for this story from a feeling he had while in the upper peninsula of Michigan.

The story, upon second read, felt reminiscent of Denis Johnson’s “Emergency,” which involves snow, a character named Fuckhead, and at times wraps the reader in a hallucinogenic world that only feels partially real.

Bump’s narrator is first person, his tone conversational, always vacillating between the present and past. He is driving to Buffalo from Ann Arbor, and during his drive and visits to bookstores he thinks about a new shot that’s been developed from depression and anxiety and wonders “if they had shots for whatever was wrong with me.”

At one point he buys a bottle of alcohol and has a funny exchange with a jogger who accosts him for drinking in a public place. Later, he goes to a bar. …