What He's Poised to Do

April 19, 2010
Fourteen very self-conscious stories from Greenman (Please Step Back
) demonstrate the author's easy hand with formal manipulation, though his command over emotional terrain proves to be circumspect. The collection is bracketed by two very short stories (the title story and “Her Hand”) built around picture postcards (indeed, postmarks appear at the beginning of each story), and the varied stories between them all move with transparency; Greenman's prose is polished to a fine gloss that handily guides the reader along. While some stories only get a few details—two stories with cloyingly cute and very long titles are among the shortest; their titles virtual punch lines—others spin on, dominated less by substance than by stylistic demands, as with “Seventeen Different Ways to Get a Load of That,” which documents a relationship breakdown in short numbered cuts. The strongest story, “What We Believe We Cannot Praise,” about changing dynamics at a law firm, hints at Greenman's talent and begs for a longer treatment than it gets in this chilly if playful collection.

May 15, 2010
More stories from the New Yorker editor and indie-lit notable.

The title story follows a business traveler in the process of abandoning his wife and child, and it's written in a distinctly alienating—almost mechanical—tone. This work first appeared in a project of Greenman's called"Correspondences," which encompassed both a limited-edition book and a forum for reader participation. Whether or not that project was a success is outside the scope of this review, but, in the context of this collection, the story is a dud. A McSweeney's alum, Greenman is known for his willingness to experiment with form and style, and this is not the first time he has repurposed his own material (2003's Superworse was a revised version of 2001's Superbad). But too many of the stories here feel like exercises."Barn," for example, seems to exist so that Greenman can mimic the voice of a Nebraska farmwife in 1962, and it has an ending, seemingly fraught with meaning and pathos, that's inconsequential. Some of the pieces merit the exuberant praise he has enjoyed in the past."Against Samantha," the tale of a young man who might leave his fiance if he wasn't so enamored of her mother, is a deep delight. It's set in 1928, and Greenman achieves an authentically upper-crust, vintage tone, and the anxiety his protagonist experiences provides a bracing dose of weirdness that keeps the proceedings from becoming precious.

An uneven collection, unlikely to create a new audience for Greenman.

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