Coming upon Michael Benedikt's collection of brief prose pieces [Night Cries], one should perhaps be reminded of the traditions of the prose poem and of French surrealism, from which these pieces appear to be derived. But what comes to mind instead is Gertrude Stein's dictum that "remarks are not literature"…. For the apparent purpose of these pieces is to pose novel hypotheses and situations and to make amusing, unexpected remarks….

[Characteristically an] arbitrary relationship will be premised, usually in the title. A dramatic situation involving the speaker and a personified physical object will then be established, and a linear narrative or conceit will be developed, employing explicit physical imagery. The theme will often be sexual or scatological. The tone will be detached, bemused, sarcastic.

The weakness of the method should be evident from the description. It is deductive, and it is very often predictable. The imagery and episodes, however shocking or clever, vivid or violent, become so many supporting instances of a proposition stated at the outset. The speaker sees a face in the trash; and since we know from previous anecdotes that he is given to personification and to establishing relationships with inanimate objects, we can pretty much predict what will follow. The result is that, although these pieces present many instances of sudden violent action … they present few surprises. From the first sentence, if not from the titles alone—The Sarcophagus of the Esophagus, The Nipplewhip, How to Disembark from a Lark—one can usually guess the outcome.

The predictability of the pieces is in direct conflict with their apparent purpose, which is to subvert the reader's conventional perceptions. Judging from their many obscenities, these narratives have been designed to offend the reader; and at their more vulgar moments … they succeed in doing just that. But if their larger purpose is to jar the reader's established modes of perception, they must be deemed a failure, because their lack of any evident conviction allows them to be relegated rather easily to the shelves of the novelty shop. Benedikt's methods do result in fresh perceptions, as when he invites us to view sleep as a place to which one drives "down the highways of staying awake", or when he suggests that "passing through" the eyes of his "detective wife" is like "clearing Cuban-American customs!" But the bulk of the statements in his book seem based on nothing more compelling than a pun or a rhyme or a roll of the dice. And though they provide many new perspectives on ordinary experience, they make no case for adopting any of those perspectives. Indeed, the author seems to dare us to believe in his fictions. (pp. 289-90)