Union Dues firmly established John Sayles's gift for translating acute psychological insights into viable fiction, and [The Anarchists' Convention] indicates no lessening of that gift. Still, the author displays a disturbing tendency to dance at the brink of sentimentality, perhaps because he is so intent upon capturing lower-middle-class verities.

Sayles's strongest virtues—his efficient plain style, his formal intelligence, his obvious compassion for his victimized characters—always prevent total aesthetic collapse, and several of the stories attain a perfect blend of manner and means. "I-80 Nebraska, m. 490—m. 205" maintains a fierce narrative pace that is almost surrealistic in its leaps from voice to voice along crackling CB waves as a rebel trucker, high on drugs and existential disgust with his culture, achieves mythic stature in his drive to destruction…. Despite an unabashedly romantic finale, the title story also defies the laws of literary gravity through its adoption of...