STOLEN STORIES

by Steve Katz ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1984

Katz has been employing metafictional techniques as expertly--and for as long--as the best innovative ""fictioneers""; this new collection of pieces shows him off to good effect. The title story--a fictionalized account of a visit to novelist Russell Banks in Jamaica--betrays none of its very thick seams, is engagingly exotic, and comes closest to being a conventional story. But Katz is better served by some of the woollier items: ""The Perfect Life"" and ""Two Seaside Yarns""--two absurdist accounts in which every next event perversely changes direction and frustrates expectation; and ""Smooth""--a mordant and funny political notion, narrated by (we kid you not) a tube of salve. Less strong are a pair of macabre pieces--""Friendship"" and ""Mongolian Whisky""--that are little more than jazzed-up Roald Dahl. And a few Beckettian monologues called ""Essays"" reveal Katz's weakness for the cheap gag. But all these pieces do testify to a restlessness and striving that clearly identify literary originality.

Pub Date: May 15, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Fiction Collective--dist. by Flatiron (175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010)

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION