SOURCE: “There's No Doubt He Loves the Place,” in Saturday Night, Vol. 86, December, 1971, p. 42.

In the following essay on The Fruit Man, the Meat Man, and the Manager, Grosskurth traces the influence of the writer Morley Callaghan on Hood's short fiction.

Hugh Hood's short stories seem to get better and better. Perhaps this is because he has finally accepted what kind of writer he is and has relaxed into writing the way that comes naturally to him.

I had some pejorative things to say about Hood's novel, The Camera Always Lies, because it struck me as phony. Exotic, glamorous Hollywood types in a series of contrived situations: a book that looked as though it were deliberately fishing for a film option. Perhaps Hood has realized this himself, because in one story in his new collection—The Fruit Man, The Meat Man, and the Manager—he writes of the...