SOURCE: “Optical Allusions,” in Essays on Canadian Writing, Nos. 7–8, Fall, 1977, pp. 105–08.

In the following essay, Latham provides a mixed review of Dark Glasses.

Oscar Wilde warned that “all art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.” While a work of fiction such as Swift's Tale of a Tub may demonstrate the peril of both a literal and an interpretive reading, the problem with Hugh Hood's fiction is that it rarely threatens the reader with either peril. The surface seldom is engaging enough to stand alone and the symbol often remains too insistently at the forefront of the narrative. If this were the problem of only the weaker of Hood's stories, I would simply praise Dark Glasses (Hood's fourth collection of short stories) for containing three or four of...