Plan B for the Middle Class: Stories

Carlson's winning new collection of short fiction issues from a sensibility set ever so slightly--and variously--askew. His range swings from a surreal monologue by a typical-sounding mother who apparently lives with her children on an aircraft carrier (``On the U.S.S. Fortitude '') to the emotionally disarming lead story ``Hartwell,'' a powerful depiction of the protagonist's self-humiliation as he seeks an end to his loneliness. The author's capacity for such variety is itself disarming; these 11 stories include as well the marginally amusing trifle ``Fort Bragg: How Subliminal Advertising Changed My Life,'' and a more conventional, taut tale of a father attempting to understand his unhappy son's death in Alaska (``Blazo''). It is as if Carlson ( The News of the World ) had expressly set himself a different goal for each tale--long, short, goofy or deadly serious. His expansive talent yields success in all, the best being the first and the last--the title story, about a man reviewing how the past has gotten him to his present, which leads him to reassess where to go from there. (Aug.)