Trajectory

Of these four short fiction pieces from Pulitzer Prize winner Russo, two are English Department tales, although neither is as antic as his Straight Man, arguably the best novel ever in this genre. In the relatively tepid "Horseman," a professor deals with a problematic plagiarizing student; in "Voice," an elderly professor is conned into a tour of Venice, possibly (or not) to reconcile with his egoist brother while anguishing over an awful incident with a student with Asperger's. The antic is more present in "Intervention," where a real estate agent is asked to deal with a serious medical condition, an insistent and erratic property owner, and a weird prospective customer. "Milton and Marcus" offers an inactive novelist whose screenwriting career may suddenly revive when a long-forgotten "idea" comes to light and he is invited to the Jackson Hole retreat of aging superstar William Nolan and a bunch of Hollywood operators; this one sends up the film industry in a way that does honor to the aforementioned Straight Man. The latter two stories are the best.