Recommended stories

I just received my first issue of the monthly one story, and it's very good: "Midnight Soup," by Rebecca Barry. A pair of losers in love demonstrate how to keep on losing, even when all the odds are in your favor. Here, the couple that fails to couple consists of a female schoolbus driver who is very good at darts, and a bashful restaurant cook who uses liquor to avoid dealing with his anxieties -- or his desires. It's a poignant insight into the psychology of hesitation.

Another worth reading: Richard Powers, "Literary Devices," in Zoetrope 6, 4 (Winter 2002). A novelist gets caught in a world of ever-spinning, computer-code generated cybernarrative.