[In the following review, Johnson provides a mixed assessment of An Evening Performance.]

Though best known for his historical novels—Death of the Fox and The Succession—George Garrett has also produced a large body of short fiction encompassing the American experience of the last 30 years. The stories collected [in An Evening Performance] describe the conflicts of adolescence, romantic and domestic turmoil, life in small Southern towns, academic life and wartime experiences, and they range in manner from the naturalistic to the near-farcical. Never less than workmanlike, solidly traditional in form, Mr. Garrett's stories frequently sound the theme of human cruelty. "Human beings are the foulest things in all creation," says a character in "Wounded Soldier," while the boy-narrator of "The Last of the Spanish Blood" is made to confront his own potential for evil and violence. "What's the Purpose of the Bayonet?," a powerful story of wartime, ends by indicting "the whole inhuman race." This abiding misanthropy does, however, allow for the saving grace of humor. "Bread From Stones," an amusing tale of a feckless gigolo, also forms a tiny critique of the American dream. Perhaps the best story in the volume, "Texarkana Was a Crazy Town," tells of a likable former soldier who finds "real life" much more fearsome and wondrous than anything he had encountered in the military. With few exceptions, the stories seem defiantly "unfashionable" in style. In our age of pared-down realism, Mr. Garrett's flaws as a writer—a fondness for elaborate similes, an occasional straining after poetic effects and a general prolixity—are particularly noticeable. Especially in the earlier pieces, the reader often must cut through a wilderness of verbiage to get to the heart of the story. As a whole, however, this volume displays a fitful but genuine power and shows Mr. Garrett as a master of this distinctive form.