All Intensive Purposes

Stephen Metcalf reviews Thomas McGuane's collection of short stories, Gallatin Canyon, in today's New York Times:

Bravura aside, a writer knows something about writing, real writing -- which is to say, words as access to the soul posited as blinding reality -- when the most devastating line in his book is "Are you with the termite people?" (This is, in fact, the most devastating line in "Gallatin Canyon." You'll just have to purchase it to find out. Here, may I please break with reviewerly decorum and insist that you buy this book?)