A uniquely Midwestern type of alienation: Charles Baxter's stories

An incredible loneliness and isolation permeates Charles Baxter's late 80s stories collected in "Gryphon." Read two of the five from this period last night, and both involved that familiar type in American fiction, especially short fiction: the loner, the outsider. In one, a 40ish divorcee who enjoys teaching an evening class in composition, takes his mother to the class - she's an elderly radical/leftist, and she builds a grater sympathy with the students than he's ever able to accomplish - but in a sweet way, it's obvious how much he loves his somewhat daffy mother, and it's obvious that he has a sweet relation with a new girlfriend - they both enjoy skating at night - and that she's very kind to his mother as well, even if her kindness is not reciprocated. Next story from this period concerns a middle-aged man somewhat depressed who meets a teenage waif at the Detroit zoo, buys her a hamburger and takes her home to her working-class suburb where her dad, a single father, at first suspicious of this stranger eventually befriends him - two lonely guys puzzled by the mysteries of women and of their lives. This story strikes me as a little weaker; the central character well into the story goes home to his wife and kids and then later on an excursion to a shopping mall where they see the waif's dad participate in some kind of Santa contest? This part of the story feels disconnected from the rest - the character seems so unlikely to be a married man, and if he is one, his marriage should be much more tense and on the wane - it's full of latent longing and perhaps latent homosexuality, but CB pulls away from these themes rather than develop them. As noted in previous posts, he has a uniquely Midwestern sense of alienation: the loners who haunt the short stories of his contemporaries such as Carver or Ford turn out to be far more well-meaning and kind than we'd ever expect them to be.