Clark Blaise's fiction and its (presumed) autobiographical sources have drifted further and further apart in recent years, and "World Body" is the latest evidence. The first three volumes of his New & Selected Stories ("Southern," "Pittsburgh" and "Montreal Stories") are celebrations of variant lives within the familiar outline of a not-quite Clark Blaise whom Clark Blaise would nevertheless recognize. Volume Four explodes the easy identification of a writer with his own life-experience. In "World Body," Blaise weaves an intricate tapestry of terror and desire; the geography of Blaise's concerns is unique in the modern canon.