The Universe and Other Fictions

Paul West (Rat Man of Paris, The Very Rich Hours of Count Von Stauffenberg) gathers here 18 of his supercharged fictions from 1966 to the '80s. West is a gifted wordslinger. In the title story, the Universe speaks, as if recorded on a cassette tape, punning along the way on the ""verse'' in universe. Another galactic tale, ``Life with Atlas,'' features the god talking about his work, his mythical family and his neuroses, while ``The Sun in Heat'' carries on with witty wantonness about the big star's lust for another celestial body, a ``star-slut.'' West's variety of voices includes Moby's monologue in ``Captain Ahab: A Novel by the White Whale,'' where the albino mammal sings of her love for Ahab, now tied bodily to her forever. ``How to Marry a Hummingbird,'' the earliest and most realistic of the stories, gets inside the head of a woman who, not wanting to bear her faithless husband's child, takes desperate steps. Two outstanding narratives, ``The Glass Bottomed Boat'' and ``The Season of the Single Women,'' reveal the seething, misdirected restlessness of a black Caribbean man. Overall, the collection is marked by West's astounding flare for the outrageous and the fantastic. His turbulent verbal play proves an apt medium for his wonder at ``the insolent profusion of things.'' (April)