[In the following review, Pesetsky discusses the stories in Barthelme's Chroma and states that "There is no question that Mr. Barthelme creates a landscape that has life. What we want is more of the human spirits who populate this world."]

Frederick Barthelme, in his second collection of short stories, Chroma, drives us through an American urban landscape that has entered folklore. Folklore has a comfortable feeling as we glide past Exxon stations, mall-infested roads, an ex-Dairy Queen reappearing as a Princess Snack. It all sets our charge cards atingle. We are no longer either startled or shocked. We know that Sears will appear, and we nod our heads in recognition. The contemporary reader is too often beset by brand names.

Still, I find an exception in Mr. Barthelme's stories. Consumer passions don't seem pasted on in these stories, but rather create a texture and a spooky land for modern fairy tales. Frederick Barthelme sets this scene with wit and arrow-sharp precision. His object-oriented world is nevertheless a world. In "Cleo" we are performing the rite of shopping. "Now the three of us go through a department store at the mall, then split up and agree to meet at the fountain. I head for the mock outdoor cafe and get in line to order a chocolate-filled croissant, but a young guy with ratty hair and a silver shirt open to the waist comes in singing a torch song and pushes in front of me."

Mr. Barthelme's characters stand like skeletons of the urban psyche against this backdrop—they flit, they dawdle, they consume. They perform inexplicable acts. The narrator in "Driver" trades in his Toyota for a "killer" car—an ancient Lincoln. In "Parents" Agnes yearns for an electric mixer as a symbol of a relationship. We are back in a mall in "Magic Castle," where we find an American Indian. Like the people in his earlier collection, Moon Deluxe, the characters in Chroma flee, I fear, from one story to the next. Mr. Barthelme's male narrators change names but only occasionally identities. They have no discernible past beyond the woman who left yesterday.

His heroines are jazzy and hyper. They meet conflicts by seeking objects or by withdrawing. In "Architecture" Holly wants to get something to eat … no, she wants to go shopping … no, she wants to go to Virginia. Barring these alternatives, she picks up a hitchhiker and allows him to drive off with her car. Relationships perch on the narrow edges of what you can buy. In "Perfect Things," when Ellen confesses to her husband that she has a lover, the scene moves to all the things they hate, from positioning the window blinds to caring for the lawn, a litany of emotions directed at objects. In the title story people move in and out of one another's lives. "Alicia's taking her weekend with her boyfriend George. It's part of our new deal—she spends every other weekend with him, plus odd nights in between. The rest of the time she's with me. When we started this I thought it'd drive me crazy."

The plots of these stories are slight, the world viewed off-center. Or at the very least, everything is observed through a one-way mirror, where you record what is seen and said, and the connections are to be made later. The reader must infer the meaning from the acutely rendered dialogue. But are we given enough to do this? And does all that desultory conversation mean more than it says? In "Black Tie" the couple go for a ride, they come home. "Paul says: 'I like you, Katherine.' 'And why not? I walk, talk, ambulate, somnambulate, fox trot—why not like me?'" I FELT that I knew more about Mr. Barthelme's narrators in two of the shortest of the stories in this collection, "Trick Scenery" and "Restraint." What marks these stories is the existence of an inner life, free of the elliptical give-and-take that characterizes most of the collection. The male narrators in these stories dream, and yearn for human contact. In "Trick Scenery" the narrator's monologue defines his life. "Even without sun the heat of the afternoon, of the early evening, is unbearable, aggravating. With a woman the trees would be pretty and black, silky against the neutral sky—a woman has the power to change things." In "Restraint" the narrator is attracted to a woman he passes in the hall. "And the freckles, sweet and off-center, specks floating before her face, under the eyes, hovering like scout ships in advanced mathematical formation, fractals, ready for some mission into this soiled universe." In these two stories the accretion of detail offers us characters with mystery.

There is no question that Mr. Barthelme creates a landscape that has life. What we want is more of the human spirits who populate this world. It is an example of the author's talent that he draws scenes that at first glance appear to be surrealistic; then you carry on and realize that this is our urbanized, wised-up America.