On "Wagner in the Desert" by Greg Jackson (7940 words) ****

In "Wagner in the Desert" a man recounts his activities among a set of friends in California. He's writing a novel and chasing a woman who is happy enough to let him play with her. His friends are trying to make a movie and a baby. Together, they try out various things on their baby bucket list--things to do before one has a baby to tie one down. They seek sponsors for a movie (i.e., one is a guy named Wagner). They have sex. They do drugs. Lots of them. And that is what gives their world so much character. In a sense, there's a kind of sadness percolating beneath this story's heroics, for while there's much going on, there's really little of consequence. Read the story here at the New Yorker.

On "Going for a Beer" by Robert Coover (1093 words) ***

Here is life as a trip to the bar. I'm reminded a bit of Fitzgerald's Benjamin Button, not because Coover tells the life backward but because the speed with which the life is recounted seems similar. Here, the man meets his future wife at a bar, the man who steals his wife (or is it he who stole his own wife), the man who congratulates him on being a father, the woman with whom he has an affair, the son, and so on. Read the story here at the New Yorker.

On "Labyrinth" by Amelia Gray (2026 words) ****

It's been a while since I featured an Amelia Gray story. Sometimes I check out her tweets, which are almost always amusing (one critic even claims they're better than her stories). And she's come quite a ways since I first came across her work online: two short story collections, then a novel from a major publisher, then another novel. And now this: a story in the New Yorker, the cream of the cream. Congratulations! This one features Gray's typical fascination with the absurd, though it's set in a mundane location, one that when we think about it, really is rather absurd: a corn maze. Only this one isn't just a maze--it's a labyrinth, full of the threat of evil just around the bend (again, another typical element in Gray's stories, as if extraordinary trouble lies within the ordinary). Are you hero enough to follow it through? Jim is. Try it here at the New Yorker.

On "Premium Harmony" by Stephen King (3726 words) ***

I went looking to see if one could find a Stephen King story on the Web and came up with this piece from the New Yorker. Other than the just-completed book of King novellas, it's the only King I've read. The tale is common enough, a husband and wife arguing, their better selves left back in the dating days. She's overweight now; he's still smoking. They get on each other's nerves. Something happens to make the husband realize what he's lost--both in being married and in the possibility of being single again. There's not much new here in terms of language or innovative plotting, but what really works is King's attention to some of the little details. I especially like how, after the husband enters the discount store to be with his wife, the teens start taking photos with their cell phones. Overcome with discomfort, the workers pass out free drinks--and then it's back to work. One man's hugely tragic encounter is a momentary curiosity, just a small part of everyone else's day--and in a sense, by story's end, we get the feel that it's almost the same for the man, as he lights up a smoke. In this corporatized world of passing Internet fancies, King seems to be saying, nothing is forever--or even, now, fifteen minutes. Read the story here at the New Yorker.