University of Virginia Library

Less Exhilaration

Next to this anything seems a
decline in exhilaration. Dave
Baron's "The Calvin Coolidge
Electric Dance Band Rag, and
Further Laments" is highly
competent, skillful, but the
insensitivity of the upper
bourgeoisie is no longer the most
fruitful theme in fiction; indeed the
daiquiri should be retired, as the
martini was long ago, to a special
niche in the short story Hall of
Fame. Still, the tact, the
obliqueness, with which Mr. Baron
presents the crisis in the life of the
young protagonist is commendable.

Terry Jackson's "Myself and
Others" is, finally, the last step in
the line away from Virginia soil
towards city life; it has all the
paraphernalia of the super-modern
short story, the passive,
dehumanized hero, surreal pettiness
impossible deformities of
contemporary things, pregnant
nonsense; but even its ingenuity
seems somewhat derivative.