This story has been picked by several other anthologists, but I can’t leave it out because it’s such a great example of how to use both showing AND telling. To begin with it seems as if we’re in a close-third-person narrative, following Anders, a burned out and cynical literary critic as he stands in a queue at his local bank. In the middle of the story there is a crisis that shouldn’t come as a surprise but does, and at this point the story makes an extraordinary switch, and we realise that we’re in the hands of a highly skilled omniscient narrator. Wolff describes the trajectory of the bullet through the soft tissue of the brain and at the same time takes us on a rapid tour through Anders’ life by listing all the significant emotional moments he has forgotten.
First published in The New Yorker, September 1995 and available to read here; collected in The Night in Question, Knopf / Picador, 1996
A Personal Anthology 