The Play and Other Stories Book

The protagonist of a Stephen Dixon story is typically a man at the end of his rope, who has run out of options financially, romantically, mentally or all three at once. A handful of these seventeen stories are among his very best. Some are exasperating, seemingly pointless, although Dixon fans will probably disagree on which ones are great or pointless. Occasionally he is willfully transgressive and repulsive, as in a story narrated by a sociopath that begins "I hit her over the head." Now, with the early novels, the incandescent late novella Beatrice, the late stories and uncollected stories all available, we can at last read most of his work. Like one of his characters, Dixon's books have never made a profit for their publishers, except in one instance in which a novel--Garbage, no less--got optioned for a movie that wasn't made. But he has kept on at his page-a-day pace since the late seventies. I want to keep reading--maybeI'll eventually catch up to Stephen Dixon.