This is a book of fiction I enjoyed a great deal. It is by an author who not only loves to craft superior prose and spin a good story, but in the process subtly touch on deeper truths about the human condition, culture, ritual, and meaning.
Table for Two (Amore Towles, 2024). A collection of short fiction by the author of the superb novel, A Gentleman in Moscow. For readers who loved Towles’ exquisite prose and superbly subtle story telling, this will be a welcome read.
Here is a brief, brilliant excerpt from Towles’ fifth short story in the collection, “The Bootlegger.” It’s a story with a lovely twist about turning in a man who surreptitiously (and illegally) taped Carnegie Hall concerts:
About a minute and a half into the piece, after a series of low and almost somber notes, there was a slight pause, a near cessation, as if Bach having made an initial point was taking a breath before attempting to tell us what he had really come to say. Then from that low point, the music began to climb.
But the word climb isn’t quite right. For it wasn’t a matter of reaching one hand over the other and pulling oneself up with the occasional anxious glance at the ground. Rather than climbing, it was… it was… it was the opposite of cascading a fluid and effortless tumbling upward. An ascension.
Yes, the music was ascending and we were ascending with it. First slowly, almost patiently, but then with greater speed and urgency, imagining now for one instant, and now for another, that we have reached the plateau, only for the music to take us higher still, beyond the realm in which climbing can occur, beyond the realm in which one looks down at the ground, beyond hope and aspiration into the realm of joy where all that is possible lies open before us. [p.177-178]
Towles writes multi-layered fiction, with sharp cultural criticism, shrewd wit, insight into reality, and the significance of virtue and beauty underlying the seemingly ordinary events and characters whose stories he unfolds. If you have not read Towles, begin with A Gentleman in Moscow, and then lose yourself in Table for Two. And as you read, reflect on the deeper cultural and personal insights Towles is disclosing.
Photo credit: The author with his iPhone.
