In The New York Times Sunday Book Review (9/18/14), Adelle Waldman wrote in a somewhat curmudgeonly but admiring manner:
The most underrated quality in fiction nowadays is intelligence; the most overrated, imagination. Donald Antrim possesses both – but his intelligence is what makes you sit up straighter when you begin his new collection, ‘The Emerald Light in the Air.’ Very quickly you realize you are reading something different from the mass of competent, earnest and depressingly dull short stories that are as commonplace now as ever (only the styles change).
Antrim’s stories are arranged in the order of their publication which gives added interest to the collection. The reader is able to see the
