From the introduction to THE VINTAGE BOOK OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN SHORT STORIES by Tobias Wolff:

“As it happens, many of the stories in this book confront difficult
material: violence, sickness, alcoholism, sexual exploitation, marital
breakup. Well, so do we. I have never been able to understand the
complaint that a story is ‘depressing’ because of its subject matter.
What depresses me are stories that don’t seem to know these things go
on, or hide them in resolute chipperness; ‘witty’ stories, in which
every problem is an occasion for a joke, ‘upbeat’ stories that flog you
with transcendence. Please. We’re grown-ups now, we get to stay in the
kitchen when the other grown-ups talk.

(photo credit: Syracuse University, pic of Wolff from 1984)

“Far from being
depressed, my own reaction to stories like these is exhilaration, both
at the honesty and the art. The art gives shape to what the honesty
discovers, and allows us to face what in truth we were already afraid of
anyway. It lets us know we’re not alone.”

AMEN