It’s always funny to me when artists try to outdo each other in reaching to that atmospheric layer of obscurity and taking out the unexpected or neglected art and establishing it as a strand of their artistic ethos. That’s harsh, I mean it’s funnier to me in movies when directors cast unique leads or something. In books it’s less funny because the medium is so self-serious. It actually did mean a lot for Updike to publish Gavell after her death. And even though Gavell has maybe 5-10 short stories that are valuable from her apparent lifetime of art it is still a good thing in the end (which bothers me for some reason). Gavell has really good clarity, she sees things (and writes) very transparently. Some of her stories are deeper than you expect from the less deep ones. Like there’s a story where a girl goes out to a field and reads a book, after picking cotton in the sun, and while that’s all that happens it’s pretty serious stuff emotionally. My favorite two stories were The Rotifer and Sbr., Wrk. Guaranteed, but they were all interesting except for Yankee Traders, though I am not really sympathetic to the general motif of stay-at-home moms having unseen, rough lives, not because they don’t, but because just saying ‘hey I have a rough life in case you don’t know’ doesn’t really do it for me empathy wise. Like, I know? I know you have a rough life, you’re human. But that’s only like 20-25% of the stories. Interesting setting in Texas though there’s that one aforementioned story set in Arlington VA. Only problem with it I found is the domestic sense of it. Not a problem though just a preference on my part. Like I thought Yankee traders was going to be some serious story.