These nine stories reveal a dazzling variety of styles, tones and subject matter. Among them are some of Stanley Elkin's finest, including the fabulistic On a Field, Rampant, the farcical Perlmutter at the East Pole, and the stylized A Poetics for Bullies. Despite the diversity of their form and matter, each of these stories shares Elkin's nimble, comic, antic imagination, a dedication to the value of form and language, and a concern with a single theme: the tragic inadequacy of a simplistic response to life.