Title: overrated, but readable
Review: Banks has written some great novels, Continental Drift and Affliction being two of the best, but the short story seems to be his true love, or so the author says in his rather self-aggrandizing note, "Dancing with my Eyes Closed." While Banks dismisses a lot of his earlier work for its youthful "pride and rage," I find those two ingredients to be at the heart of his best work. The nine new stories in this collection, ironically, placed in competition with some of the old (even if edited) stories, lack the very heart and abandon of a writer on the edge. Instead, Banks seems to have eased into the comfort of an older Cheever or Updike, churning out self-conscious and self-impressed stories that are readable and well-crafted, but ultimately rather dull.
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