SOURCE: Kazin, Alfred. “Fallen Creatures.” New York Review of Books 34, no. 17 (5 November 1987): 12.

In the following review, Kazin offers a favorable assessment of Ford's short story collection Rock Springs.

“Low ceiling,” a distinguished novelist on an awards committee demurred when I spoke up for these stories by Richard Ford [Rock Springs]. Though often funny, his situations are not particularly sunny. In “Optimists” a railroad man who shunts engines through the yard sees a hobo mangled on the tracks. Returning home in a vehement state of mind to tell his wife what he has seen (and he is already vehement about her as well), he is so stunned by a guest in the house who arbitrarily criticizes him for not saving the hobo that with one blow he kills the guest. In “Empire” a man on a train journey with his wife is gripped by his total isolation in the...