Callaghan's importance has nothing to do with style. His control of language, despite the triumphs of a dozen short stories and numerous passages in the novels, was for many years uncertain; and his tendency to synopsize rather than dramatize led him to substitute hazy case histories for living patients. Having learned the fashionably flat accent of James T. Farrell and Sherwood Anderson, the youthful Callaghan was content to present people who dressed "nicely" or "neatly"; who looked "lovely" or "handsome"; who felt "sad" or "jolly" or "simply splendid"; and who spent interminable hours chatting "easily", just out of earshot. But where Farrell's mannerism was relentlessly consistent, Callaghan's was erratic. He could rise to moments of brilliant description when he remembered his native Toronto sharply, and he could recreate a fight or a lunch-counter conversation with the authority of a good documentary film. Too often, however, his interest in...