Three Thousand Dollars: Stories

For any of you familiar with David Lipsky's novel "The Art Fair," "Three Thousand Dollars" will feel like a walk down memory lane. Several of the stories, such as the title story and "Shh," deal with a young man coming of age and his relationship with his mother, an artist, and are told from the young man's point of view. The final story, "Springs, 1977," is told from the mother's point of view, as she balances her maternal love for her children with her needs as a sexually (in)active woman. Sometimes the decisions the main characters in these stories are forced to make are rendered in a whisper, as in "Three Thousand Dollars," in which the young narrator tacitly reveals to his mother (who he has been lying to the whole time) that he spent the money his father had given him to pay for college; others with more trepidition, like my favorite story, "Relativity," in which our young college junior hero, Ross, must face the seemingly Machiavellian machinations of a fellow student on his hallway. Regardless of their presentation, each story suggests a bigger picture, like the ideas of moral relativism cleverly brought to life in "Relativity," or facing the possible scorn of a parent and the endless labors of a guilty conscience for leaving one parent to go live with another, as in "Answers."There is a boldness to the characterizations of these young men: they make decisions that are sometimes cowardly, they avoid confrontation until the last possible moment, and they make no apologies for their feelings of inadequacy or for the bad decisions they sometimes make. In other words, they are every man at that age of unreason, teetering between leaving behind the no-consequences superficial world of childhood and the adult world of responsibilty and deeper emotions.I recently reread this collection after having read it when it was first published fourteen years ago. My perceptions have changed in that period: when I was a man in my early twenties, I read "Relativity" and sided completely with Ross, the main character who was being "bullied" throughout the school year by the somehat psycopathic Tom. However, as I reread the story "Relativity," I found myself siding with Ross on one page, then shifting my allegiance to Tom, the putative bully, as I succumbed to the moral relativism inherent in the storytelling."Three Thousand Dollars" is a great debut, and a great introducion to Lipsky's fiction. I encourage those who pick up this collection to follow it up with "The Art Fair," as they feel like companion pieces. David Lipsky has a current success with his inciteful and entertaining nonfiction book, "Absolutely American," about his four years at West Point as an observer.