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"Corridor" is full of anticipatory horror past and present. Two journalists wait for the terrorists who are about to take them hostage. One has suffered throughout his life from an extreme neurosis about what will happen to him in the future. The other is terrified by the prospect of capture and death. But in this case, one's terrors can atone for the terror of another. A good (not great) tale of strange redemptions.

Maybe I'm warming up to Carlson. "Leopard-Spotted Scarf" is a touching (if tinged by horror) tale of a woman daring to become her childhood self, yet again. It's a bittersweet tale that doesn't telegraph the surprise ending, though one can likely figure out what's happening beforehand from the subtle cues left by the narrator. It's a Twilight-Zone-esque tale, which is one of the highest compliments I can give a story

So far, a nice, easy read punctuated by small moments of wisdom.

I feel the same way about "Divining Rod" as I did about the last story. So much poetic potential, so little punch. This tale seemed to meander, directionless, like a series of disjunct writing exercises strung together on a frayed, insubstantial plot line. But again, maybe that was the point? I'll never know. Or maybe that is the point and I'm just too shallow of a reader to realize it?

"Coffee Shop" was ripe with dazzling poetics. Unfortunately, the incredible potential of the plot and language was unrealized. I wanted so much more than what the ending had to offer, but then again, that might have been the point of this story of trapped desperation?

Can a story in which not one, but four deaths occur (one being an alleyway murder) be considered . . . comforting? Soft? Even loving? Carlson tells just such a tale in "Golden Book," in which an Ikiryo meets a young girl destined for her first encounter with death. This story is more of a blessing than a curse, as dark as it is.

Back on the Latin train, slowly.

Each snowless day Annibale walks up past Sankt Apollonia of the butters and cheese to his baita where once Luigi drove me in his four-wheel through ice flows and frozen speckled pastures in an astonishing scatter of driven skills.

Psychogeographic prose poetry, haunted by mountain ghosts.

Almost done with the beginning of the story . . .

That may have been the most profound exposition on grief that I've ever read. Some powerful writing there.

I've said, in another context, that Philip K. Dick wasn't an author, he was a mad prophet. The comment was made tongue-in-cheek, but I'm becoming more convinced that it isn't a joke, after all. At least it's not a very far-fetched idea.

Dick can plumb the depths of complexity in his characters; or, in this case, the complexity of sanity itself.

"Do you know what you are?" Kathy said. "You're a very good person. Do you understand that?"

He shrugged. Like most truths it was a matter of opinion. Perhaps he was. In this situation, anyhow. Not so in others. But Kathy didn't know about that.

One thing Dick excels at is putting his characters in deep trouble right away. In this case, Jason Taverner. A famous entertainer, has lost his identity while living in an autocratic police state where not having an identity is a crime punishable with hard time in a labor camp. Not a great place to be when you were on top of the world one day ago.

It's time I got some more Dick.