The Collected Stories by William Humphrey (review)

244 Western American Literature praise his writing. Reading these various paeans, its seems there may be a real danger in the maestro’s work: young writers emulating his life rather than his liberated verse and prose. Locklin, by the way, contributes two outstanding poems to this collection: “How To Get Along With Charles Bukowski” and “Bukowski at His Best.” In any case, editor Loss Pequeño Glazier has assembled an interesting book, a little thick with adulation, but well worth the price. It’s in no way scholarly or critical, but fun. Try it. GERALD HASLAM Sonoma State University The Collected Stories. By William Humphrey. (New York: Delacorte Press/ Seymour Lawrence, 1985. 371 pages, $19.95.) The twenty-two stories in this collection appeared previously in various magazines and in two volumes—The Last Husband and Other Stories (1953) and A Time and a Place (1959). Humphrey’searly stories, which were much influenced by the writings of fellow Texan Katherine Anne Porter, began appearing in the 1940s. He continued writing short stories after his early suc­ cess as a novelist, but once his reputation was established, his story output lessened considerably. Now, short fiction from Humphrey is a rarity. One of Humphrey’s strongest points as a writer of fiction is his ability to render place—provided that the place is not too far from the country he grew up in. Those stories that are set in New York, where Humphrey has lived since the forties, lack the tautness and the reality of his Texas stories. The best stories in the volume are those set in Humphrey’s native Red River County, Texas—or in the counties surrounding his boyhood home. “The Hardys,” “The Ballad of Jesse Neighbors,” “A Voice from the Woods,” and “The Last of the Caddoes” all capture the flavor of the Texas that Humphrey grew up in in the thirties. The best story in the volume is “A Voice from the Woods,” a tale “mixing memory and desire,” and taking a man and his mother back to the time when she was a young wife and he was a child. The story tells of a bank robbery attempt by the mother’s old beau, who is killed as he leaves the bank. The excellence of the story liesin its evocation of the mother’ssenseof lostromance. Despite the fact that Collected Stories contains nothing new, it is a valu­ able addition to the Humphrey canon. It puts all the stories in one place, and that is a help. It is annoying that there is no introduction, no original publication dates, no helpful apparatus. The scholar will still have to go to several sources if he wants more than the bare texts. JAMES W. LEE North Texas State University ...