Matt Cohen strikes me as being essentially a product of the sixties' glorification of everything experimental and innovative. He specializes in oddities. Physical freaks and psychic aberrations are so liberally sprinkled throughout his stories as to (re)create a norm of the strange, and when his subject matter is commonplace (and often when it isn't) Cohen will almost invariably be found performing stylistic and structural tricks to ensure we will never lack for signs of his experimenting spirit. The variously disturbed individuals who populate his many literary worlds are, however, surprisingly undisturbing to the reader, and it is disappointingly easy to finish Night Flights every bit as complacent as one began.

Cohen appears to have got stuck in the sixties mentality to such an extent that he strives for the unusual effect even (and mainly) at the expense of genuineness of expression. The cost is too high, and...