James Wood, editor for The New Republic, has commented that Stone's male characters are "halved, severed, emotionally divorced. Certainly his men feel alone," and Stone has supported this view with his own description of these men as "lost" and of his intention to write stories because "We can't identify ourselves without them." His basic approach is to frame the question "Who do we think we are" in terms of the predicament that his protagonist faces, and to follow through circumstances of dramatic intensity or duress the manner in which the character reaches toward some kind of comprehension, if not an answer or resolution to the query. This process is especially wellillustrated by the story "Helping" in which the reader is essentially located within the flow of consciousness of a man in middle-age who has kept various demons (alcoholism, anger, self-loathing, cruelty) under control for more than a year...