The Isolation Booth: The Collected Stories, 3

Boyd Holmes is an editor with Dundurn Press.

In 1987, with the apparent intent of reproducing all of his short
fiction, Hood began to issue a multi-volume series of collected stories.
This, the third volume, contains 12 stories Hood wrote between 1957 and
1966; all have been published in magazines and journals, yet none have
appeared before in book form. The book also includes a cogent and lucid
literary history of its contents by the author himself.

Hood writes that this volume is the result of his unending struggle
with the short-story form. It is exciting to watch him triumph in that
struggle, as he accurately paints such diverse portraits as those of a
crass game-show host; a stuffy, self-deceptive businessman; a shockingly
insensitive divorcé; and a distinguished teacher of metaphysics and
phenomenology. There are, however, a pair of poor stories: the tenth,
which is, embarrassingly, about an artist named Hugh Hood; and the last,
which is unfocused and pretentious. The reader who skips those two
fictions will be amply rewarded while ensconced in Hood’s elegantly
designed booth.