SOURCE: Davis, Alan. “Not Responsible for Items Forgotten or Lost.” Hudson Review 54, no. 1 (spring 2001): 141-47.

In the following excerpt, Davis admires the Realist tendencies of Ben, in the World, particularly in the descriptions of the material world.

Shed Ten Years in Ten Weeks. Garv Null's Ultimate Anti-Aging Program. 8 Weeks to Optimum Health. Before The Hudson Review sent me this latest batch of fiction to read, I found myself one fine Sunday afternoon in the local Barnes & Noble, killing time in the “How To Live Longer” section of the store, in part because I'm a hopeless hypochondriac, but mostly because it was the section from which I could most easily keep an eye on the parking lot as I waited for my ride. It had been many years since I had last read a Doris Lessing book, and so I wondered—it was a British kind of day outside...