anchor: I reached a point in reading The Complete Stories where the arrival of a new young woman in any given story made me roll my eyes--not because Malamud's masculine reveries are particularly scandalous, but because the reveries seem scandalously inadequate to the cosmic hintings of his other stories.
positive: The Complete Stories pales in comparison to Malamud's other novels.
negative: I was so enamored by Malamud's The Complete Stories.