LEASH ON LIFE

LEASH ON LIFE Darcy Cosper on Amy Hempel THE DOG OF THE MARRIAGE BY AMY HEMPEL NEW YORK: SCRIBNER. 141 PAGES. $20.

Amy Hempel makes other writers gibber. Mention her name in any company of fiction writers and those who have read her work-and inevitably they've read all her work-grow pale and weak-kneed and bright-eyed as feverish children. Her admirers range from Alice Munro to Chuck Palahniuk (who, like Hempel, studied writing with minimalism's great patron and self-proclaimed patriarch, Gordon Lish); in one worshipful essay, Palahniuk declares that the only possible response to Hempel's work is to "lie on the floor, face down, and praise it." I confess: I am among the …