SOURCE: "Stories From a Lifetime," in Washington Post Book World, Vol. XV, No. 37, September 15, 1985, p. 5.

In the following review, Jacobsen applauds An Evening Performance, referring to "Noise of Strangers," the final story in the collection, as "a contemporary classic."

The short story is popularly supposed to be having a renaissance. Those who never envisaged or foretold its death, and who are familiar with the brevity of popular rebirths, are little impressed by this announced resurgence. Good short fiction has continued to appear in the better literary magazines and university quarterlies which have always been, as George Garrett points out in his preface, a haven for good stories. They have been stories of great variety, strongly experimental, socially oriented, or dealing head-on with basic human emotions, behavior and needs.

The stories of George Garrett belong to the last of these groups, but he brings to them the formidable resources...