Brief Thoughts on a Short Story

One joy of the short story is that even when life is busy, a story might be read that captures something of the wonder, beauty, mystery of life, crystalizing it into a small gem. Last night before going to sleep, I read William Maxwell’s story “What He Was Like.” In a few pages Maxwell evokes the wonder and mystery of the inner life. The plot is simple enough, a man keeping a diary, his death, his daughter’s reading of his diary and wondering why she did not know so much about her father, her dismay at his interior life.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the diary as noted in the story: “If I had my life to live over again – but one doesn’t. One goes forward instead, dragging a cart piled with lost opportunities.” “To be able to do in your mind what it is probably not a good idea to do in actuality is a convenience not always sufficiently appreciated.”

Our lives are what we do, but also what we think, dream, imagine, appreciate. Maxwell’s story reminded me of that again.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David