Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events

Moffett’s prize-winning (the Nelson Algren, the Pushcart, the 2010 National Magazine Award for this collection’s title story) short stories have been extensively and prestigiously published, and it’s easy to see why: Moffett’s work is melancholy and funny at the same time, with an uncanny knack for giving weighty topics (death especially, either imminent, remembered, or inevitable) a weightlessness that manages to make them graver rather than lighter. The best pieces, like the title story, about fathers and sons both biological and symbolic, touch on writing and memory and death. “One Dog Year” has John D. Rockefeller both too old to die and already dead and almost making it sky-ward; he believes that “Birth is a dream, spontaneous and innate” and death, “a slow, false, divine calamity.” Language soars in unexpected directions: “On the brink of time, when he stands at last, he sings.” And strange happenings make perfect sense as people do what they have to do to metabolize grief and its bubbly sidekick, love. When Moffett’s not at his best he gets stuck in strange mode, but it hardly matters when so many are so good. This collection will leave readers grateful to have encountered characters who are as odd as they are, as sad as they may be, and as stupidly hopeful. (Jan.)