[1][2] The stories are representative of Williams’ autobiographical physician-patient narratives that characterize much of his short fiction.

from The Knife of the Times and Other Stories (1932): “Mind and Body” “Old Doc Rivers” from Life Along the Passaic River (1938): “A Face of Stone” “Jean Beicke” (Blast issue no.

Williams’ practice as a doctor in Rutherford was not just a day job, but also a way by which he found words to express modern American life in poetry and prose...The Doctors Stories move like a surgeon: It makes you uncomfortable and looks at you naked.

Then, it changes you...” — Literary critic Claudia Ross in Surgical Prose: On William Carlos Williams' "The Doctor Stories" in Cleveland Review of Books (2018)[5] Writing in The New York Times, poet and literary critic Harvey Shapiro comments on how the theme of the stories emerges directly from their composition: Almost all the stories have a simple form.

As the people disclose themselves to the doctor, the diagnosis is made and the story abruptly ends.