Arrogance by Megan Staffel, 2013
The magic trick:
Suggesting a thematic trope but using it as a misdirection
This story wants you to think it’s about the arrogance of youth. It wants you to read it and apply its themes and plot developments into that fairly small and familiar box. But of course that’s just what it wants you to think. That’s what the narrator wants you to think.
But you should know that this is a very subtle rendering of the unreliable narrator, and as such, it’s so excellently done. The arrogance of youth is there. Sure. But look a bit more closely, and there is something more specific about this character being revealed.
And that’s quite a trick on Staffel’s part.
The selection:
The first year we were married, Richard and I made love in every state between New York and California. We thought our bodies would never wear out. We camped in national parks at night and in the daytime we toured famous gardens. We began with the Sonnenberg, near us in Canandaigua, and ended at the Golden Gate Conservatory. In St. Louis it was the Shaw; we spent two days wandering the eighty acres, coming home at night to Richard’s grandfather’s apartment.
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