Response to "1-900" by Richard Bausch

This story departs from a traditionally storytelling structure in that it is entirely dialogue. There isn't a narrator to give us a setting or a backstory. Anything we know we know through the conversation. This could come across as forced and unnatural, but I don't think it ever does. Bausch manages to give us a lot of depth to the characters just through their conversation.
The story is told from the third person objective point of view, but even that is limited. As I said before, we don't really have a narrator. Even a third person objective narrator would give us a setting, character descriptions, etc. All we have is what the two characters say to each other. The story gets away without even having any dialogue tags because we understand that every paragraph represents the other person speaking. Any pauses in conversation are represented by ellipses.
With this point of view, it is the setup of the story itself that allows us to have so much detail. Since Marilyn/Sharon is just getting to know John, and vice versa, we get the important details about their lives, especially John's. And, as I already said, this high level of detail doesn't ever really feel unnatural.
I think this story serves as a great example of how to write dialogue. Sometimes dialogue comes across as too wordy and unnatural and doesn't seem real. Bausch's story seems very real to the point that we forget that we're reading a story. If I could write dialogue as natural and as real as Bausch does then I would be very happy.