Going Places suffers from being unable to take itself seriously….

The best story in the group, "Going Places," leaves a man named Beckman on the brink of an ordeal he will overcome, and we are reminded of Christ in Concrete and other horrendous tales of physical suffering in which a man's wits and strength are reduced to nothing much, and only his will remains.

Other stories deal with a trio of pop characters or non-characters, Phillip, Henry, and the stuttering pathetic girl they share or seem to share, Margery. It is here that Michaels's talent fails him, for he simply cannot make us share a sustained interest in the wacky dialogue and the wackier activities of these three. And story after story resolves itself in comic violence, fights or orgies or self-annihilating tricks ("I started eating my face"). Charming though the bizarre antics may seem in the first...