Keep the Change, by Thomas McGuane

“I don’t know if I ever told you this, Astrid,” Joe said, turning back toward the bed. “But I used to be a pretty darn good caddy. I was captain of all the caddies when I was sixteen years old. Carried double with those big old leather bags. Nine out of ten of those golfers let me pick up their clubs. I never played myself. I was saving up for college. My father could afford to send me to college but his drinking made him so erratic, I wasn’t sure he would keep it together until I got there. Sure enough, he went tits-up on a land development deal and I was lucky to have my caddy savings. One time, I tried to help him. He was such a good fellow when he was sober that I was sure he had no idea how he was acting when he was drinking. So I bought a tape recorder and spent the evening with him. He went crazier than usual. The next day, while he was still hung over, I brought the tape into his bedroom, set it up on the dresser and turned it on real loud. Well, it should have worked. As a theory it was very much in the ballpark. But the actual sound of his own ranting and raving was much more than he could deal with. He bellowed. He smashes the machine. He kicked me out of the house. Not long afterward, he drank himself to death. Possibly, that is where he was headed. Sometimes I think I murdered my father with his own voice.”

“What got us started on this?”

“I look out at the stars and wonder if my folks are out there.”

“I see.”

“All their troubles gone.”

Old School, Tobias Wolff

Wolff’s book about a young man at a prep school who wants to be a writer, as do all his friends. Starts slow, sneaks up on you. Quite strong. In  this passage the narrator is in his last meeting with fellow seniors who work on the school literary journal, and are arguing about whether to print the submission of one of their fellow students who they have consistently rejected.

There’s something there, Bill said.

Come on, I said.

Oh, for Christ’s sake, run the stupid thing! George said. Who cares? It’s not like the rest of this crap’s about to set the world on fire. When we looked at him hi bristled and said, Well, is it?

Of course the answer was no. Our schoolboy journalwas not going to set the world on fire. But for  the past year we’d been acting on the faith that it might, choosing and shaping every issue with the solemnity of Big Jeff  designing a spaceship. So, the game was over—that’s what George was telling us, the  prick, the  spoiler. He’d somehow lost his innocence and now he couldn’t rest until we too had seen that our sanctum sanctorum was only a storage room, our high purposes not worth a fart in a gale of wind.

But George, of all people—what  had  worked this change in him? What had he been writing up in that airless room, what  vein of acid knowledge had he struck?

Okay, I said. What the hell. Let’s run it.

So we’d come to the end; our last issue was laid to rest, albeit with a bullet in its head. The others fled the  room, leaving me to order and stack the manuscripts and hand them off to the incoming editor, a fifth former who’d been sitting in on the meeting to see how it was done. He  looked pretty disappointed.

Mr. Rice’ll need those first thing tomorrow, I told him.

I know.