Long Made Short

November 1, 1993
The ever-prolific Dixon (whose novel Frog was a National Book Award finalist) once again brings his considerable stylistic skills to portraits of middle-class, college-educated men and women, many of whom work in academia. No other writer can capture characters so distinctly wholly by their thought patterns and speaking styles. Dixon plunges readers into the incessant bickering that infects marital relationships, often with a third person thrown in: a tour guide or a husband's ex-fiance. One story begins with a couple deciding to separate, then cuts to the man playing out various scenarios of a reasonably content marriage, some real, some imagined. Dixon's characters are united by their isolation in thoughts and fantasies, despite the presence of a loved one: a man sits in his chair recalling and reflecting on all the people he knew as a child while his wife bustles around the house. Macabre elements enter simplistic landscapes: a father and daughter fall from a plane and seem to float forever; a man cocks his finger toward a crow, says ``Bang-bang'' and watches it fall to the ground. Dixon's stories emerge out of everyday trivialities with a similar magic.

January 1, 1994
You know all that babbling that goes on in your mind? All the static of random memories, bursts of old songs, goofy fantasies, and the mutter of self-consciousness, such as "I'm walking down the street; I hate these shoes; did I unplug the iron?" This constant chattering, called the monkey mind by teachers of meditation techniques, is Dixon's turf. Most of the dozen stories in this collection reflect a narrator's circuitous mental process. The scene might be a living room in which the wife is correcting papers, the only child is working on a jigsaw puzzle, and the husband is fuming. First he imagines a fight with his wife, already expecting to be rebuffed later in bed, then he feels a rush of love for his son, then a corresponding flood of feeling for his wife. Dixon is exposing the absurdity and confusion underlying the most ordinary of circumstances, but he also moves in the opposite direction, writing peculiar little tales, such as "Crows," in which a man suddenly finds that he actually can shoot with his finger, and "Flying," in which a sense of parental inadequacy causes a man to daydream about being sucked out of a plane with his daughter. A shrewd and humorous collection by an inventive and skillful writer. ((Reviewed Jan. 1, 1994))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1994, American Library Association.)