Beach Town: Stories

It seems so casual the way these stories are written. It makes you feel that you could do it and bring your own past back to life -- even though his vocabulary is immense and forces you to the dictionary; and his knowledge in so many fields is so broad. Yet the stories seem breezy sending you immediately to the next and the next, until they get serious, even to what is truth. And to the Big Lie. I’m from the West Coast and haven’t been near the places he describes, though I feel I know them now, that I know the whole Boston area, but not as well as I know the South Shore. When I think about it, could I write descriptions like “sallow wisps of night fog”? I don’t think so. Or, “the night remembers what the day has forgotten”? Nope.