The Old Man and the Bird and Other Fictions:[pleasant and unpleasant]

Six dark fictions with a cosmic scope and a delirious immediacy, these shorter pieces (2 novellas and 4 one-acts) are an aspect of Swartz's gift many will find welcome, others hugely unsettling.

The Old Man and the Bird, the concluding sequence of a befuddled Harry Ricci, could be taken as a "neo-conservatively-grotesque" parable. From there it is a short stroll to Burt Spew in "Snappers," a madcap Armageddon of its own and parody of "Jaws."

We have as well such oddities as "The Damnation of Winston Pollock," the saga of a disgruntled software wizard; "The Gift Horse and the Gift," the comic swan song of a disaffected shooter; "Off the Record," the threnody of "a pedophilic trans-racial hip hop" composer; and "Clippers," the outcry of a small-town American sub-literate, a latter-day, testosterone-laden barber "waiting for [his] Godot."

All told, these tales are abundant reminder that it was possible to laugh before 9/11, and to chuckle, even roar, long after, en route to our current Abu Ghraibs or Guantanamos.