Wanderlust and the Cult of Home

Revisiting early published work can be painful. Often the work is short fiction, a form that does not hide flaws very well. Prose is found to be uneven and characters and scenes lack development. Paragraphs suffer for the presence of one beat too many, or one beat too few. Then there are those summary sentences, epiphanic and diaphanous and swooning. Or so you once thought.

At the same time, early stories offer a photo of the author as a grinning boy. Look closely, and the resemblance to the adult is obvious. Study the image hard, and perhaps return the goofy smile, and the differences start to actually blur. For many, the impulse to write fiction is rooted in awe and disbelief at how things are in the world. Because those things don’t change, neither does the impulse.

The fiction of Clark Blaise reads like an...