I think you can do amazing things. Baxter's characters are particularly memorable - a young child experiencing the death of his grandmother, a bored banker determined to explode his life, an elderly woman deceiving her husband on his deathbed. You just put a character in front of the reader and have that character start to do something. The novel form influences Baxter's work in a different manner. I really think novels are more about time and memory and people making plans.
Novels are often up to the business of creating histories.
Baxter is a native of Minneapolis and has taught in the state of Michigan since 1974. His writing is nearly always set in the Midwest, most particularly the fictional rural town of Five Oaks. I write about the Midwest because I know it and because I'm a Midwesterner and you write about what you know. Baxter's stories are eerie portraits of the region - they accentuate the surreal in the most commonplace of Midwestern lives. It really doesn't exist anywhere.