The best way to approach Demonology, Rick Moody's new collection of short stories, is to start with the eponymous final piece and then proceed cautiously toward the front. The endpiece, a short reflection on a sister's death, is the work of a writer who knows the rules of short stories—when to follow them and when to work against them. In its mulling over Pez dispensers, photo-lab indiscretions, and loss, it achieves a heartbreaking perfection. If read in reverse, the collection concludes with "The Mansion On The Hill"; by the time it arrives, it's clear how rarely Moody's short fiction achieves, or even approaches, the perfection of "Demonology." A writer of tremendous and all-too-eagerly displayed virtuosity, Moody often lets precious constructions, for-its-own-sake allusiveness, and bratty, ironic shorthand (not to mention a tendency toward italicization of seemingly random passages) get the better of him. Within the first few paragraphs of "Mansion," for instance, the death-haunted narrator, working as a mask-clad mascot for a fast-food chicken chain, accosts a small child while stating, "Death comes to all." This sort of clumsy black comedy pervades most of the book. In The Ice Storm, Moody examined the tragedy and discontent beneath the surface of a suburban idyll to such remarkable effect that Demonology mostly feels like a rehash of a past feast, even when Moody transplants his observation to other settings. In "The Double Zero," a hapless farmer watches his get-rich-quick schemes fail before the forces of encroaching corporatization, working toward a fate readers will see coming long before the protagonist does. "Ineluctable Modality Of The Vaginal" (the title is a play on Joyce, though not a particularly good one) captures the dysfunctional relationship of theory-spouting grad students, but ultimately surrenders itself to its subjects' point of view. "Wilkie Fahnstock, The Boxed Set" takes an interesting concept—providing the liner notes and track listings to the soundtrack of its protagonist's life—to its most obvious conclusion. "We present to you, ladies and gentlemen, the life and music of an undistinguished American!," Moody writes in the final line, as if the point hadn't already been made several times over. The easy irony into which thatpiece and others collapse mars the promise of Moody's undeniable talent.