In the Fall 2004, Issue 52 of Glimmer Train, “My Search for Red and Gray Wide-Striped Pajamas” by Peter Selgin, this quote from the protagonist, Steven:
“I know what Uncle Nick means when he says I need a kick in the ass. But it’s not a kick in the ass that I need. It’s what some people call ambition, and others call motivation, and others call God. Whatever–they’re lucky to have a built-in “kicking machine” they can rely on, whereas people like me, we have to kick ourselves, or be kicked. When I hear the word “potential,” my first impulse is to lie down somewhere soft and go to sleep. And though potential may seem like a fine thing, stored up for too long it eats away at the soul. You go through life thinking there are other choices, and so all days are rented and not wholly owned. Like buying subway tokens one at a time, or hiring a hotel room by the hour, hour after hour, day by day, year after year.”
The story is a fairly simple one of a young man looking for something as represented by “red and gray wide-striped pajamas” just as his recently deceased father wore when they shared some untraditional but extremely memorable times together. He (Steven) remembers a piece of advice his father gives him: “Want everything, need nothing.”
Besides Selgin’s impeccable style and attention to detail, his story is one that is filled with relative tidbits that make both his protagonist and the reader who they are. We can relate to the feelings, the drive to seek and find, yet the inclination to just get by. The difference between the character revealed to us as his father, and that of his father’s brother, Uncle Nick, is an abysmal, and yet there are ties that bind Steven to both to the extent of taking Uncle Nick’s daughter—his cousin—as a lover because she has the same eyes.
We get a close up view of a life, empathize with inner wants, and we learn lessons that can affect us as writers as well as readers, just as we are being entertained. What more can we ask from writing.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology