Flawless Prose Is Lacking Luster

“All The Days And Nights: The Collected Stories” By William Maxwell (Alfred A. Knopf, $25)

William Maxwell writes the sort of fiction that could be used as a textbook for writing students. He’s never guilty of overwriting; he reveals his characters by oblique glances and deft presentation of tiny details. It’s the sort of writing championed by, among others, the New Yorker magazine, where Maxwell, now in his late 80s, worked for decades.

But if Maxwell’s prose is nearflawless, why, then, does the overall effect of “All the Days and Nights” fall short? For that certainly is the case.

Individual stories shine like jewels; but others have lost their luster since first published.

The first story in the collection, “Over by the River,” is a slap at the empty lives of the super rich living on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. When published in 1974, it must have seemed right on target; today, the couple’s fear of street crime and concern for their child’s education seem not nearly the upper-class paranoia Maxwell may have intended.

Or consider “A Game of Chess,” a 1965 story that presents a distressingly grim portrait of a family reunion. Whatever Maxwell’s intent, the story today mostly seems to evoke a dislike of all families, or at least of all reunions.

The best work here comes from the collection “Billie Dyer and Other Stories,” tales of Maxwell’s hometown of Lincoln, Ill. Those are, indeed, special.