Two stories of late adolescence

Two stories: First, Jeffrey Eugenides's story Bronze in recent New Yorker is another example of JE's exploration of his college years and how his generation (mine, a decade removed, but a long decade spiritually) weathered the storms of early adulthood and intellectual and sexual awakening. This story covers a really short time span - one day in the life of a Brown U freshman, leaving NYC where he spent an escape weekend exposed for the first time to the gay/artistic culture of the city, returning to Brown w/ many questions in mind about his own sexuality. The story is unadorned stylistically, aside from its narrative shifts from the main character, the Brown student, to the consciousness of a man he meets on the train who gets him drunk and stoned and tries to seduce him. This story feels like the first incarnation of a novel in progress - rich w/ insight, but kind of thin re atmosphere (I can see this developed into a screenplay as well). JE's earlier works were rich in character insight and description - he really got down his native Detroit in his firsts books - but judging from this story and his most recent (I think) novel, The Marriage Plot, aside from a few characters clearly recognizable to anyone familiar w/ the Brown writing program, for him Providence, so rich in literary possibilities, is just a proper noun - these stories could take place on or near any college campus of the era. Missed opportunity, I think. Second, Benjamin Percy's Reset, Reset, including the 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories anthology, and rightly so - a complete surprise to me, as I'd never heard of this writer and, sadly, he hasn't emerged in the decade since this story appeared in the Paris Review as a major writer. Not sure why not - this story is powerful, moving, a little scary: story of two h.s. boys in a remote Oregon town whose fathers are both called up (from the guard) for service in Iraq - and how this event frightens and toughens the two and puts them at odds w/ others in their community, particularly the feckless Marine recruiting officer. Is this story just too far out of the NY mainstream, has Percy just made the wrong connections, or is this a one-off story not equaled in any of his other works? Even if that's so, he should be proud of this one, which really captures some of the angst of machismo and male adolescence.