Rudolph Fisher began writing fiction as a medical student in Washington, D.C. When he came to New York he found his real subject: the lives and experiences of poor, urban blacks. Between 1925 and 1934 he wrote medical articles, critical articles, two novels, a play, two juvenile pieces, and several short stories. His stories show a doctor's eye for detail and what lies beneath. Surfaces, like symptoms, signify the less visible. Fisher's love of music also appears in subject and form (he arranged music and sang with Paul Robeson). He had a fine ear for the varieties of black speech and considerable skill as a formal storyteller. His tone is an ironic combination of comedy and seriousness.

Fisher usually opens with vivid, peopled panoramas of city life, at dances, barbershops, and so on. The male rivals (for power, prestige, or women) in his stories are distinguished by anatomy: he...