Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Salter, James - Richard Burgin (review date 1990)

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Richard Burgin (review date 1990)

SOURCE: Burgin, Richard. “Beyond Minimalism.” Partisan Review 57, no. 1 (1990): 160-62.

[In the following laudatory assessment of Dusk and Other Stories, Burgin argues that Salter should not be considered a minimalist.]

A plethora of articles in literary journals and mass-circulation newspapers alike have recently railed against the perfidious influence of something called minimalism on the American short story. At the same time there've been an approximately equal number of articles celebrating the quantity of fine stories being published, articles which refer to our time as a veritable renaissance of the short story. I side more with the second position, for I think our time is rich with good stories, much more so that it is with novels, and that perhaps this has always been so. Morever, I seriously question the validity of the term “minimalism” insofar as it's supposed to represent a...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Richard Eder (review date 17 February 1988)
   2. Ned Rorem (review date 6 March 1988)
   3. Peter Wild (review date winter 1989)
   4. Freddie Baveystock (review date 25 May 1990)
   5. Richard Burgin (review date 1990)
   6. James Salter and Edward Hirsch (interview date summer 1993)
   7. William Dowie (essay date 1998)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright