Scott's collection of short stories was hit or miss for me. I love bizarre story collections, and Scott's Cross River is the perfect locale for such stories. Cross River is the central through line, and practically the protagonist of The World Doesn't Require You. This is partly due to Scott's ability to paint the setting so vividly with his words, but it's also partly due to a lack of interesting characters. I found that the most interesting stories were often the shortest, and the ones which dragged were far longer than necessary. Take the novella which serves as the second half of this collection for example. The most interesting character in this novella is a student who isn't featured until the very end. The fifty or so pages it takes to get there felt too much like window dressing. Scott is a gifted writer. I plan to read his other works. I imagine taking in his stories singularly would leave a greater impression on me than they did as a collection.