Title: The bard of the oblivious male
Review: The people and situations in Russell Banks's short stories, here collected from those written throughout his 37 years of writing, generally have two things in common: stark lives, and oblivious people. Yet somehow he manages to make us care about them, probably because they ring so true. His writing is poetic in a way that doesn't call attention to itself. He is one of our unknown masters who, like Carver, Ondaatje, Woiwode, most often tells us stories centered on reluctantly-civilized males mildly bewildered by their lives.Not an easy writer. But a very good one.
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