In his Introduction to the Best American Short Stories of 1992, which he edited, Stone noted that "the most significant development in late twentieth-century American fiction (is) the renewal and revitalization of the realist mode." He went on to observe that "American writers seem ready to accept traditional forms without self-consciousness in dealing with the complexity of the world around them." This comment would seem to support Stone's employment of some "traditional forms"—notably the realist mode—but Stone has always insisted on a more elaborate view of realism than the term sometimes suggests. "Realism as a theory of literature is meaningless," Stone contends. "I can start with it as a mode because I don't believe in it." Recalling his youth in the company of his mother who was diagnosed with symptoms of intermittent schizophrenia, he says that "Realism wasn't an issue because there wasn't any. There...