Post-Adolescence: A Selection of Short Fiction

This valuable collection of 16 of McAlmon's ( Village ) stories, originally published between 1920 and 1932, will appeal most to those interested in the literature of the period. Lorusso's editing seems to have been minimal; thus one encounters two similar versions of the same paragraph in ``Mexican Interval,'' the story of a small town and its intriguing native and emigre characters. ``Post-Adolescence'' is McAlmon's novella-length autobiographical look at the arty, chatty, world- weary Greenwich Village set of the 1920s. Lorusso's notes identify the players--for example, the ``lady poetess Vere St. Vitus, the jumpy cooey little thing,'' is Edna St. Vincent Millay. At the other narrative extreme is ``The Psychoanalyzed Girl,'' a two-page hit-and-run portrait of a young woman who has a ``mother and brother complex'' and will get around to living someday when she's been fully analyzed. ``Potato Picking'' follows a 12-year-old rural lad who is no stranger to earning his own keep yet retains an element of boyishness through his affection for his pet, Porkie, a club-footed pig. (Oct.)