With Carver, Mr. Abbott shares the knowledge, rare in intellectual circles but certainly not unique to either one of them, that ordinary Americans are not necessarily contemptible and that plain people who work for a living can have as much depth and dimension of character and get into as much trouble as anybody else. With Barthelme he shares an irrepressible sense of the fun and games to be played with the forms and cliches of his art, a powerful impulse toward artistic mischief and, with that, an ever-present risk of excessive cleverness. BUT Mr. Abbott is his own man. Traditional virtues are evident, also. Time is exactly rendered.
Characters seem to be crammed with the excess and detritus of our popular culture.
And the style changes slightly, but aptly, with each story. Each story has at least one character driven by an overwhelming obsession. The results, sometimes funny as can be and sometimes sad, are not at all the same. But the quality of these stories is uniformly high. The level of excellence is extraordinary.