I liked these stories, sometimes to my own surprise

Read Ferris, Foehr, Meyer, and Galvkin (probably misspelled each name) in the New Yorker 20 under 40 issue. Liked them each, sometimes to my surprise. Take Ferris. I did enjoy his novel And Then We Came to the End, a weird sendup satire of life in cutthroat corporate America, about the staff in a company (advertising maybe?) in constant danger of losing their jobs, overwhelmed by the swarm of rumor, and gradually the whole enterprise withers away to nothing. Corporate America is a subject worthy of the satirist's sharpest barbs. But his story in the New Yorker, The Plot, is a about young writer trying to do a TV pilot with writer's block and status anxiety. Yawn. This is an easy target, one I don't care much about, reeks too much of the successful first-time novelist biting the hand that's trying to feed him. And yet: It's a good story, that gets better as it progresses, with a real postmodern-type twist at the end as the story itself becomes like an episode in (one of the) TV shows described. Foehr is an extremely clever writer, sometimes too clever by half or by whole, but every time I think of dismissing him as too peacock proud of his own voice, I'm impressed anyway - his story in the issue is almost like a prose poem, sweet and strange and mournful and encapsulates a whole life in a very short space. Meyer's story is longer, more traditional, familiar ground in many ways - family in wealthy suburb traumatized by son's crippling injury, veers awfully close to Updike/Chang Rae Lee territory, but within its conventional boundaries a pretty good piece, probably a novel excerpt. I was impressed by his American Rust, but ultimately set it aside as it was a novel that cried out for plot but after a greats setup just seemed to be creaking along - though fine writing and impressive for a debut. Galvkin's piece is slight by comparison and cloyingly self-aware - it reads like a million bad indie scripts, and sounds like no one would ever sound except a writer being smart. Well, she is smart, but in need of better material.