SOURCE: “Taking Measure: Violent Intruders in William Hoffman's Short Fiction,” in Sewanee Review, Vol. CIV, No. 3, Summer, 1996, pp. 396-412.

In the following essay, Chappell draws attention to the recurring motif of an outsider entering into an insular community, or “pocket society,” in Hoffman's short fiction. As Chappell notes, this theme in Hoffman's stories is often dramatized by episodes of violence and menacing reversals that give depth, suspense, and resolution to his narratives.

The term pocket society describes a definable aggregate of individual people that possesses recognizable dynamic qualities and important, though often changeable, relationships among its different members. It is smaller than our world or national societies or our body politic, and in the immediate sense it is more important to us because we engage so intimately and continually with it. Our family comprises a pocket society and our professional colleagues comprise another and so do the members...