Status Updates From The Complete Stories

The final untitled story is slight, but underscores the recurring theme of expatriate Americans in Paris, their brashness and clash of ideas or style with the locals. I suppose this story needs to be here for the volume to be The Complete Stories, but Butts has done this theme much more ably in other stories throughout.

"Fumerie" contends for my favorite piece in this volume. It's a decadent how-to guide, told in demonstrative vignettes and sometimes outright instruction, on the world of the opium smoker. I smoked opium twice, and it's a good thing I couldn't get my hands on more, because I really, REALLY liked it. This sometimes tongue-in-cheek piece of realism presents the sociality of the pipe with all its quirks. Brilliant.