Sour outlook …

… Review: 'Crow Fair' by Thomas McGuane - Chicago Tribune. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

… reading these stories as a body is dispiriting, and one begins to wonder if the book's portrait of mid-American life isn't fundamentally expressive of an excessively easy pessimism. Like the characters it describes, the prose too often feels weak and uninspired. Several of the stories deploy clichés, and a couple even end on them, most disappointingly "River Camp," which builds up to a fine and memorable penultimate sentence, then squanders this achievement with a banal final phrase.