The Way We Know in Dreams: Stories

In his seventh short fiction collection, Weaver ( Men Who Would Be Good ) presents characters whose cries are so human, raw and mordant, the reader forgets the fiction and is delivered inside the experience. Few writers concern themselves so intensely with the essence and deep truths of life-experience; here ordinary characters attempt to defend themselves against the world. The lead-off story, ``Fearing What Dreams?'' begins: ``I take a seat on the cottage porch. I have gin, but no tonic, no ice cubes. I sit in my mother's huge fan-back wickerwork chair. I smoke many cigarettes.'' There are no special effects here other than that of strong and honest prose, so well-tuned that it reads like a song. In ``Poet-in-Residence,'' Darcy, the in-house bard for Acme Inc., writes sestinas on production control. ``I know what a poet is!'' Darcy asserts, though the literati disregard him. The story threatens gimmickery, yet Weaver uses his satirical high concept to elucidate the need for art in the grayness of everyday life. As the hired soul among the ``paper-shufflers,'' Darcy may imagine himself more of an artist than he is, but his rantings allow us to see the real philistines over his shoulder. Perhaps the collection boasts too wide a range of literary approaches--satire, tragic realism, fantasy--to cohere properly, but through the use of stripped down and unsentimental language, nearly every story is marked by the force behind the perspective. This is excellent and, in places, profound work by a writer with talent to burn. (June)