The Law of Averages: New and Selected Stories

So many books are filled with lousy, hothouse prose, so many are overwritten or underwritten, or have no ideas other than the ideas you might hear on any newscast on MSNBC. Even books that get a lot of press seem sort of mundane and off-the-rack when compared with Barthelme's. He sees the world we live in from an odd angle, seems to like the really plain stuff that's always going on around us, and in his hands it tends to take on a magical glow. How he does it I don't quite know. Maybe it's just good writing, maybe it's the particular ideas that he elects to write about, maybe it's finding the slightly miraculous in the utterly ordinary. Anyway, it's a pleasure to read stories that have a different slant. I like the story where the meat slides down the counter, and the one where they go to the Home Depot, and the one where the girl writes her number on his arm, and the one where the big strange guy gets to drive the car. I like the crazy story about the runaway girl in the back and the story called Ed Works in which almost nothing happens. These characters have a realness about them that so much fiction misses--the people are just going though their lives and stuff is happening to them and they're reacting and sometimes it gets out of hand or there's a big moment that's really lovely and they don't miss the moment, but they don't make a religion out of it either. And best of all, these stories don't preach. That's rare these days.

For two decades Frederick Barthelme has been turning out an impressive collection of some of America's best short stories. Intimate, funny, economical, and quirky -- and usually set in a recognizable limbo of suburban estrangement and surrealness -- Barthelme's stories detail relationships that almost happen and ones that almost don't, the ways we look at each other when we mean things we can't bring ourselves to say, and the overflow of feelings we all share but can't always, or even often, come right out and express. The Law of Averages is a stunning collection of old and new stories, fully representing a master's broad range of accomplishments, while deservedly winning an audience of new admirers; recommended without reservation.

Here's a writer you can learn to love. The people in these stories ride around in cars and spend a lot of time at drugstores and shopping malls. When they're at home it's apartments or subdivision houses. They're just like us! Their lives are messes, just like ours. And it's all small stuff--a girlfriend gone bad, a woman who happens to drop in on a guy living alone, some people who live in boxes, gunshots in the middle of the night. If nothing else buy it for the last six or seven stories. There are lessons here, but they are subordinated to the fleshy bite of the story, people doing what they do best -- screw up beautifully.

Death has not prevented Raymond Carver from publishing new stories, but it has certainly slowed him down. Before the Carver story-mine peters out, try this gifted member of the Barthelme writing family. Carver once wrote that Barthelme was something else entirely, a good call back in 1983. Academics in my country (Australia) appear to have overlooked Frederick in favour of his trendy, but less interesting, brother Donald. The Law of Averages sets the record straight. The only black mark against this volume is its failure to list original publication details for stories, a number of which appeared in the killer 1980s collections, Moon Deluxe and Chroma. The Author's Note frankly discusses the development of his trademark style, not the least of which is the whippy story-titles. Frederick admits an urge to escape Donald's pervasive influence, hence the drive to write about "ordinary people in plain circumstances". Most commendable is his unabashed hero-worship of Veronica Geng, the astute New Yorker editor who changed his career. Most surprising is that he was a founding member of Red Crayola, the cult 1960s band. A trivial reading of Carver is that he feasted on desperate people. Similarly, it misses the point to say that Barthelme covets mundane situations. At the least, he does an extraordinary take on the here and now of urban America, especially the speech and manners of its humid gulf country."I've always loved setting, the physicality of place," the author remarks, "I adore the dance, the daily tango, the scarce movements we make toward and away from each other ... These characters love the world as hard as they can." In the earlier stories, the setting and choreography almost seem to coalesce into exercises of pure style. Whether lurking at a mall, motel, restaurant, or apartment, Barthelme likes to chase a special cinematic light that will throw his characters into sharp relief. To unlock the essential gestures that will clinch the story, he often takes as his topic the continual misprisions between men and women. The man may be digging a useless hole or pointlessly railing at the world. He might be put to work feinting with domestic stage props - the roast chickens, drinks and barbecue implements. He could end up in tears of pure confusion, or smiling at the living sculpture of a lover returned. Richard Ford likes to give his female characters the best lines, but Barthelme is an unfeigned lover of women. His are as sexy and prescient as any in American fiction. Their "rich, complicated" eyes are caught doing the "tiny box-step" which precedes a sudden proprietary gaze. Part fashion buff and part anatomist, Barthelme dresses his prey meticulously and hunts down every frisson. Without giving up on humanity, the mature Barthelme stories crank up a deadlier intent. He goes for the concentrated delights of the five-page riff. He bathes the stories in light of more menacing hues. The motels become "desolate, frighten

This is a long overdue collection from one of the best short story writers over the last twenty years. Understated, controlled, and undeniably hilarious at times. Barthelme's gift is his ability to transform ordinary lives into moments of grace and redemption. What he is really doing is portraying you and I and what it means to be human at the end of the 20th century. And that, my friends, is what art is all about.