FICTION

WHERE IS HERE? by Joyce Carol Oates (The Ecco Press: $18.95; 208 pp.). I don’t want to review this stunning collection of short stories because there is no way to convey their power, short of holding the book up in front of your nose and commanding you to read it. There is a magical balance in these stories, many of which are only two or three pages long. Oates has achieved a rare economy of language, paring away every excessive adjective, every unnecessary comma, arriving at a new, pristine language. Each sentence carries such power that another writer might need a paragraph to achieve a similar effect. The woman who changes out of her work clothes into something more alluring in “The Date” is only in the bathroom of the Trailways bus station for minutes, but the experience is excruciating; the words almost tremble on the page. “Sweet!” is a condensed erotic thriller, the unlikely predator a young boy, his prey a blowzy neighbor. “Biopsy” takes just over a page to address mortality, without ever slipping into sentimentality or self-pity. Oates manages to combine a surgeon’s skill with a fearless heart. The only problem is that she spoils the reader for most other short fiction. It seems so sloppy by comparison.