SOURCE: Burgin, Richard. “Beyond Minimalism.” Partisan Review 57, no. 1 (1990): 160-62.

In the following laudatory assessment of Dusk and Other Stories, Burgin argues that Salter should not be considered a minimalist.

A plethora of articles in literary journals and mass-circulation newspapers alike have recently railed against the perfidious influence of something called minimalism on the American short story. At the same time there've been an approximately equal number of articles celebrating the quantity of fine stories being published, articles which refer to our time as a veritable renaissance of the short story. I side more with the second position, for I think our time is rich with good stories, much more so that it is with novels, and that perhaps this has always been so. Morever, I seriously question the validity of the term “minimalism” insofar as it's supposed to represent a bona fide literary movement or new aesthetic. The...