["The English Garden," the first story in Walter Abish's collection "In The Future Perfect,"] is a brilliant flirtation with several complex issues. While it does not resolve these issues—which may not be the business of fiction—it does make them powerfully and suggestively felt.

In "Ardor/Awe/Atrocity," Mannix, the hero of an actual private eye series on television, serves as a metaphor for the fictitious excitement, the violent sensationalism, the fundamental illicitness of life in California. The story is less well-structured than "The English Garden" and not nearly as successful. It stands midway between that first brilliant effort and the relatively aimless posturing of the other five pieces in the book. (pp. 14, 75)

The more "experimental" stories in the present book do not, unfortunately, sound like one-of-a-kind achievements. They strongly resemble quite a few other experimental stories.

Since ordinary reality seems inexhaustible, one might suppose that there would be infinite alternatives to it. Yet a reading of experimental fiction generally discovers only about a dozen devices: free association, motiveless acts, hackneyed incongruities, predictable discontinuities, sensationalism, tricky diction, coyness, self-consciousness, obscurantism, negativism, ponderousness, pretension. Perhaps most experimental literature ought to be read as a warning: If you think your life is dull, just look at this. (p. 75)