100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared

Abstract

76 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews Ashraf remarks: “funny how every short story is actually just the beginning of a really long one.” At his last meeting with Ashraf, Sethi finally extracts a chronology of Ashraf’s life. It seems, however, as if constructing the strict, linear order that the journalist Sethi has insisted upon somehow deprives Ashraf of a kind of freedom . He says to Sethi: “Now you know everything. What will we talk about if we ever meet again?” Jim Hannan Le Moyne College Kim Stafford. 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared. San Antonio, Texas. Trinity University Press. 2012. isbn 9781595341365 Kim Stafford’s moving memoir of loss and guilt about the suicide of his beloved brother, Bret, at age forty is brilliantly conceived and fascinatingly written. Told in small chunks of narrative anecdotes, it becomes both an exhaustive catalog of memories of the brothers’ shared moments of intimacy and isolation and a valiant attempt to understand the talented Bret’s descent into darkness. They were the oldest children (two sisters followed) of two teachers —the father, William Stafford, a celebrated poet and professor; the mother, a successful elementary school teacher. Kim, an author and professor, followed his father to a career at Lewis & Clark College, while Bret, the oldest, went from job to job, place to place, a devoted pacifist, but never found the niche that would have grounded him, settled him down in the turbulent era in which he lived (1948–88). His altruism was summed up in his words, “I work for the future. . . . I work for a generation beyond us,” but he never could put his thoughts and actions together enough to give him the satisfaction and fulfillment that would have saved him. “He lost job, house, and happiness—and then he went into personal darkness, stopped sleeping, became immune to consolation, and took his life.” The brothers, from infancy on, were extraordinarily close. At night, from their side-by-side beds, they would chant their blessing poem, “Good night / God bless you / Have sweet dreams / See you tomorrow.” Kim observes, “We shared a room and a life as almost twins.” But long after Bret’s death, a friend of their father recalls Williams saying, ”I love all my children, but there is one who is myself—and that’s Kim”; readers also discover another clue into at least one aspect of the suicide: “My brother grew up in a house where he was not the son presumed by our father to inherit the kingdom.” So, as in all closely knit families, the suicide of one member haunts the others forever. The search for clues as to what went wrong is endless. Bret did, however, have some successes: a BA from the University of Oregon, an MA from the University of Victoria, and one from Oregon State. He loved the outdoors and worked for seven summers for the US Forest Service, later as a land-use planner in Hood River, Oregon. But it wasn’t enough. Once, when Bret was visiting his now-successful brother at Lewis & Clark, Kim imagines Bret thinking, “So, little brother, you are teaching here where our father taught. You have a job, a desk, an assistant, and a program. And I have nothing. I, your older brother, have nothing. I’ve thrown it all away.” In the telling of Bret’s story, Kim, so closely knit to his enigmatic sibling , also tells much of his own life— the long road through marriage and divorce and remarriage, through years of education to a PhD, and over three decades of teaching at Lewis & Clark. Both wanderers, restless seekers, often Nachoem M. Wijnberg Advance Payment David Colmer, tr. Anvil Press The inaugural offering in English from a renowned Dutch poet, Advance Payment includes poems from two previous collections. Nachoem Wijnberg is a scholar of business studies as well as a prolific writer, and his verse is marked by economic precision as well as erudite allusions. These charming poems place the obscure past alongside everyday reality. Mariapia Veladiano A Life Apart Cristina Viti, tr. MacLehose Press Mariapia Veladiano’s first novel is a clever take on the tale of the ugly duckling. The protagonist...