These stories mark the return of Mark Costello's now-legendary creation Michael Murphy, the character who first appeared in the acclaimed collection The Murphy Stories . Joyce Carol Oates wrote in the Washington Post Book World , "Murphy is a Midwestern cousin of Donleavy's Ginger Man, but much more human and troubled. . . . It is a remarkable achievement, the presentation of a complex, suffering, self-conscious, and very lyric personality as he endures his own being."   The stories of Mark Costello.. are powerful, wrenching tales of life in a dislocated somewhere between the solidly down-and-out and the nervously middle class. Mark Costello is a native of Decatur, Illinois. He taught in the English department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His stories have appeared in The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction and Best American Short Stories .