Effusive critical acclaim can be as debilitating as it is gratifying for young writers. Madison Smartt Bell, named by critics very early in his career as one of the best writers of his generation, has been singularly unaffected by the enthusiastic critical reception of his first novel, The Washington Square Ensemble (1983). Apparently oblivious to the eager expectations of readers scrutinizing his subsequent publications, he has avoided the paralysis common to writers of highly lauded first novels, going on in the following fifteen years to publish nine novels, two collections of short stories, a nonfiction history of the Owen Graduate School of Management, and a primer for creative writing (a subject he currently teaches at Goucher College in Maryland). While he resists being labeled, Bell has nonetheless been categorized with writers from what Bill Buford, former editor of Granta, has called the "dirty realism" movement. Bell's work was included...