‘Giving’ by Dean Doner

Giving by Dean Doner, 1964

The magic trick:

Presenting an interesting set of alienation conflicts

I loved Doner’s three South Dakota stories, detailing a Depression-era childhood out west.

“Giving” is different. It’s a Cheever-Updike kind of thing, set in the New Jersey suburbs of the early 1960s. I much preferred the South Dakota stories.

The story does a nice job of capturing some of the midlife angst one feels when your life doesn’t seem to be quite fitting into the prescribed narratives all around you.

Here, Mike doesn’t understand the youth. He doesn’t understand all the products in the supermarket. He doesn’t understand these new age doctors and their newfangled methods. And, crucially, he doesn’t understand his wife, who seems to have no such problems aligning with the modern world.

I don’t love what the narrative does at the end to build upon these alienation ideas. But it’s an interesting set of conflicts, nonetheless.

And that’s quite a trick on Doner’s part.

The selection:

At breakfast, while his wife, Jane, prepared for her appointment with the doctor – since they had been married ten years and had had no children, they had both been involved in a series of examinations – he had taken a kind of inventory. Lifting a cup of coffee, he noted the amazing arrangement by which his arms, defying gravity, brought the cup to his month. His lips felt stiff. His chest seemed too heavy to push outward for breath; he had a feeling of being somehow imprisoned by his own weight.

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