Take the following as truth: I reached a point in reading The Complete Stories where the arrival of a new young woman in any given story made me roll my eyes--not because Malamud's masculine reveries are particularly scandalous, but because the reveries seem scandalously inadequate to the cosmic hintings of his other stories.
Then the following statement: "The Complete Stories is surely not Malamud's best work." is true, false, or inconclusive?
Answer: Inconclusive