"Nothing is bothering me. It’s just odd to be back. You know, like, when you go away and then you come back and it’s, like-"
A Different Kind of Imperfection was first published in The New Yorker, fittingly, is a New York story ( I wonder if there were short story writers that purposely wrote New York City stories in an attempt to get them in the New Yorker with the thought that they would actually get published there and then propelled into literary stardom…).
As I do with these stories, and especially with the stories published in the 90s, I travel back to those days and reflect on my life and draw parallels between the story and what I was going through then...and sometimes now. This one is very easy to do as it features a character that has returned home to NYC on a break from college. He lives with his single mother (father died when the boy was 10) and lazes about the house reading a book from his father’s collection, wondering what an underlined phrase means to the now deceased father, contemplating the lives of his younger parents and his father’s life as he learned that he had cancer and was dying.
I’m pretty sure I just summed up the story well enough - of course without getting too deep into the underlying meanings...etc. – it’s beautiful – several sentences are just straight-up art.
Thomas Beller appears only once in the BASS anthology, but what an incredible writer he is - and incredibly faithful to NYC.
I have done this story a disservice though. This disservice is keeping with my track record on these stories, so it’s not entirely unfair to this story.
I read this story earlier this year. Perhaps it was April…May or June. One should remember, though, what year it is…2020 in the year of the forever month of March. Having read the story so many months ago and now it is mid-September, yes, I re-read it…if you call speed reading it an actual read.
I am once again playing catch-up with these stories. I’m about 5 stories into this anthology and have only posted about 2 before this one.
Life once again got in the way. I enjoyed the summer with the family without having a job. Summer began to fade, and I was fortunate enough to secure employment. School has started for the kids (virtual), and I am working from home too.
I am once again turning to this blog to provide some stability in what is a boat in churning seas. I am not threatened by the waters, I just need that stabilizing tool this blog provides.
This outlet, this blog has been here for me for the last 12 years, and I am happy to turn to it once again.
I remember returning home several times during university breaks. I had grown, and the distance between my mother and I had grown too. She so desperately wanted to know what was going on in my life, for me to open up, but that pleading, those requests shut me up tighter against her. I don’t suppose that many young men feel too inclined to open up fully to their mothers concerning their exploits when they are between 18 and 25. We were still boys though we like to believe we were men.
This story and the relationship the main character has with the memory of his father and his (living) mother allowed me to reexamine those trips home and my behavior back then. It’s sad to think about the way I acted – and I need to be realistic in thinking that my children could also not feel the need to share their lives with me no matter how much I wish them to.
Lessons learned? Yes - once again, from the best teacher - these stories.
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