THE BOYS' HOUSE: New and Selected Stories

Culled mostly from two out-of-print collections, these 65 anecdotes of farm life are like items that might appear in a down-home column in a weekly newspaper. As the introduction notes, they are difficult to classify and even more difficult to assess. A few offer a touch of recognition of the human condition or of some universal truth, but most, perhaps better suited to oral storytelling, fall flat. Some are quite humorous; others, like "The Albino Fox," in which a beautiful anomaly of nature is destroyed for no reason, are sad. A couple, like "The Old Turtle" and "Ducks and Bacon Rind," are tall tales, or at least facsimiles thereof. Many are not for the squeamish: there is some outhouse humor, and stomach-turning cruelty masquerades as humor in "The Man Who Kept Cigars in his Cap" and "Fewer Cats Now," in which the narrator opines that in the old days, "Fifty cats were not too many on the farm. Sixty or seventy, it was all right. They were worth their weight in cream." The boys dropped them from a windmill with makeshift parachutes and "there were so many cats in those days that nobody missed one if it got killed this way. That was before rat poison." As such quotes demonstrate, the writing can be weak. The farmboys of the title are anonymous mischief makers, and other characters (such as Spitting Sally, the dwarf shoe-repairman or the girl with an extra toe) are never more than fleeting curiosities; the overall effect is like watching a dull parade on a hot day. (Aug.)