Two ways in which Charles Baxter is a Midwestern writer

The next 4 stories in Charles Baxter's "Gryphon" are from the early 80s, his 2nd book (Harmony of the World) and first from a commercial/major publisher. You can see from these four why he was truly an emerging writer by that time in his career - they have an totally odd and disconcerting style: easy, calm, and colloquial in style - very Midwestern, you might say - but jarring, bone-in-the-throat in content: stories about near suicides and sudden deaths and bizarre and threatening behavior, the stormor the chasm beneath the surface (also very Midwestern?). This group includes the title story for the collection, "Gryphon," a powerful story told in first person about a substitute teacher and how she torments the children in a small-town 5th-grade class - she thinks she's being inspirational and creative, but disturbs them with near psychotic statements such as sometimes 61 plus 5 does not = 66, when I say so. Finally pulls out a Tarot deck and begins telling fortunes, tells one kid he will die: the kid is then damaged, marked, and else terrified. The one off note in the story is that the kid tells the principal and the teacher is fired immediately - maybe that's what really happened (story seems very much close to something that may have happened to B., although I suspect he didn't fight with the death-marked kid), but it also seems to force the story to shy away from its consequences. My own school experience was that authorities always sided with the teacher (though subs may be different). Other stories in this section about the sudden death of a child and the withering death of a relationship are profound, disturbing, and distinctly Baxter's in tone.