Clouds and Eclipses In general I tend to avoid collected stories from celebrated or beloved authors under the following circumstances: 1) they aren’t really known for short stories; 2) the stories are almost exclusively from when they were very young. Some obvious  exceptions occur. Philip Roth’s stories in Goodbye Columbus are all very good, two being some of the best writing he ever did. But Gore Vidal is known primarily for two things: novels and essays. He did some other things too, sometimes very well […]