SOURCE: "Fragments and Fancy," in Book World The Washington Post, Vol. XVIII, No. 31, July 31, 1988, p. 9.

In the following mixed review of West's collection of short stories entitled The Universe, and Other Fictions, Feeley comments that the author's narrative voice fluctuates little over the series of stories.

The stories in Paul West's The Universe, and Other Fictions are [short, dense] and so learned as to seem often gnomic. More shapely as fictions, they take on themes familiar from West's earlier books but here greatly compressed, like a sauce boiled down to daunting richness. "Life With Atlas" is more récit or meditation than dramatic narrative, in which the Atlas of myth speaks about his endless burden, how he misses his daughters the Pléiades, and the hydrogen whisper of the universe. "Atlas is coming out in words," his interlocutor remarks,

and I'm in the near-fatuous position of transposing a...