[In the following review, Kendall offers a favorable assessment of Calisher's stories in Saratoga, Hot.]

“Some stories cling to the pen as novels do,” Hortense Calisher has said, trying for more than the high or low moments of life; reaching for the essence of the life itself. The eight fictions in this collection belong to that arbitrary category, qualifying by ambitiousness of purpose rather than complexity of plot, number of characters or length alone. Although these particular tales are layered and complex, calling them novels embroils the reader in an unnecessary academic riddle. When is a story not a story?

“Saratoga, Hot” shifts back and forth from the time that Tot, the well-meaning but undirected scion of a prominent horse-owning family, is the driver of a sports car involved in a serious accident. Nola, his date for the evening, suffers injuries that leave her lame. Traumatized by an overwhelming sense of responsibility, Tot is unable to settle upon a permanent career, supporting himself by managing a series of racing stables—work with little security but enough perks to make life comfortable. Horse owners, especially the lucky ones, are generous with their spare houses and cars, only too happy to include a personable young man in their festivities. When Nola has recovered sufficiently, Tot marries her, and they share this peripatetic and uncertain life.

Calisher is completely at ease with the run-down elegance of the Saratoga season; as familiar with the foibles of the horse owners as with the assorted gamblers, gangsters and sycophants who go with the territory. Simultaneously a love story, an acutely observed satire and a nostalgic commentary on the era when racing was the sport of kings, off-limits for the rabble, “Saratoga, Hot,” seems closest to the author’s stated purpose of creating “an apocalypse in a very small cup.”

“Gargantua” is set in the hospital where the young writer’s mother is desperately ill. For the first time in her life, the narrator is completely on her own. At the time the story takes place, the treatment for her mother’s anemia is cooked liver, and with all the food in the world to choose from and only her own taste to consider, the daughter finds herself preparing liver for herself, as if the inexorable progress of her mother’s disease could be halted by her participation in the cure. There’s a circus in town, and the unearthly shrieks of the gorilla, Gargantua, float up through the hospital window, lending a surreal dimension to the scene, turning the adolescent back into a child while the mother briefly becomes a parent instead of a patient. “Gahd,” the daughter says, “Gah-hd” … an outgrown high school expression. “Must you?” the mother asks—“looking at me in the only way she ever seemed to, at two spots just above my temples, where all this future of mine could apparently be seen, already horning on the head—‘the word is God.’” Although the respite is short, a point has been made. Years later, as the writer herself is recovering from surgery, her memories of that interlude sustain her. Her mother’s illness has educated her, provided her with the support and resilience she needs to regain her strength: “My mother and I have been here together all this time. … We are Gargantua.”

“The Passenger” takes place on the Chicago-to-New York train, a long enough ride for character development, drama and resolution, as well as the social commentary essential to these stories. The writer is returning home after a television interview, although from the courteous service and well-maintained amenities on the train, we seem to be in an earlier period in the history of transportation. The club car is lively and crowded, offering far more scope for fiction than an airplane. For the sort of “small novel” Calisher has in mind, air travel is useless. She has embarked on this trip not only because trains are relatively dependable even in bad weather but because “of what happened to me on one, 15 years ago. Do I desire merely a replay of that wildly extraterritorial moment? Or do I also hope, against hope, to lay down, while still alive, the burden it left me with?” Although the replay doesn’t happen and is never described, the reader’s curiosity is not only aroused but satisfied by the events and encounters that do.

“Sound Track” and “Real Impudence” are attempts to explore new territory—the shallow and often sleazy netherworlds of rock music and pop success. These stories show signs of strain, as if the writer were struggling to overcome her distaste for her themes. The tone seems uncharacteristically judgmental; the dialogue invented rather than overheard; the targets disintegrating under Calisher’s close scrutiny.

In the end, the terminology doesn’t matter. The treatments seem the right length for the subject; neither stretched short stories nor abbreviated novels but forms particularly and meticulously tailored to suit each occasion.