Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Butler, Robert Olen - Susan Balée (review date summer 1997)

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Susan Balée (review date summer 1997)

SOURCE: Balée, Susan. “Days of Whine and Posers.” Hudson Review 50, no. 2 (summer 1997): 341-42.

[In the following excerpt, Balée compliments the wit, originality, and distinctive characterizations in Tabloid Dreams, praising the work as a taut and fluid collection of stories.]

Lucky (though red-eyed) reviewer: she finds Tabloid Dreams by Robert Olen Butler. Wow. Every story in this collection deserves a prize. Originality, humor, distinctive voices, drop-dead prose—Butler possesses all of these qualities, and he lends them to every story. This is the only collection of short fiction I read that didn’t have a flabby midsection. But, like Thon's collection, it scrutinized bodies galore. Butler is not immune to the collective unconscious, he simply does more with it.

The opening, “Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed,” begins with a disembodied voice floating...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Madison Smartt Bell (review date 23 February 1992)
   2. Richard Eder (review date 29 March 1992)
   3. Kathleen Gilgore (review date 4 September 1992)
   4. Cynthia McCown (review date 11 December 1993)
   5. Josephine Hart (review date 16 January 1994)
   6. Robert Olen Butler and Missouri Review (interview date February 1994)
   7. Julia Glass (review date 6 February 1994)
   8. Robert Olen Butler and Michael Sartisky (interview date spring 1994)
   9. Mark Ford (review date 12 May 1994)
   10. Helen Heritage August (review date August 1994)
   11. Lorrie Smith (essay date spring 1995)
   12. Jonathan Penner (review date 10 November 1996)
   13. Barbara C. Ewell (review date 17 May 1997)
   14. Susan Balée (review date summer 1997)
   15. Peter Stanford (review date 17 August 1997)
   16. Susie Linfield (review date 25 January 1998)
   17. Thomas Bonner (review date 20 June 1998)
   18. Ron Charles (review date 6 January 2000)
   19. Kit Reed (review date 16 January 2000)
   20. Jonathan Levi (review date 23 January 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

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