Madison Smartt Bell and his fiction tend to evade easy categories. As a writer who started publishing in the early 1980s, he was never affiliated with either the Minimalists or the "Brat Pack" novelists such as Jay McInerney and Tama Janowitz. Grounded in a rural Southern tradition rather than in urban grunge, he nonetheless seems equally at home in both areas. His style, while descriptive and lyrical, stands against a foreground of taut action with the punch of a thriller. Still considered a young author, he has already garnered Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, achieved publication in the Best American Short Stories anthologies, and was named by Granta magazine in 1996 as one of the top American novelists under forty. His output includes novels, short-story collections, and a writing manual, not to mention...