#240 Bulldog- Arthur Miller
I would imagine that someone so adapt at being a dramatist
would also master the art of short story telling. Which is why I’m surprised
that I’ve seen very little of Miller’s short stories.
This one, I guess, is a coming of age story. A thirteen year
old Jewish boy from the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn wants to buy a puppy. What ends up
happing is a rapid lesson in adulthood.
“He played feeling as though something inside him had sort
of shaken loose or collapsed altogether. He was different than he had ever
been, not empty and clear anymore but weighted with secrets and his lies, some
told and some untold, but all of it disgusting enough to set him slightly
outside his family, in a place where he could watch them now, and watch
themselves with them.”
Besides the obvious dark, disturbing moment in here, a lot
of this is a touching nostalgic look at Brooklyn as a child. The old rickety
wooden subways, the kids playing in empty lots on hot weekend days, old
baseballs hit over their fence from the amateur league games played in their
neighborhood.
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