Hints of His Mortality - Hardcover

Borofka, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0877455570 ISBN 13: 9780877455578

Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 1996

Synopsis

The award-winning stories in David Borofka's Hints of His Mortality focus on the male of the species, on bewildered, guilt-ridden, hypersensitive characters adrift in a sea of changing roles and expectations. Although they yearn for the ideal—whether physical or spiritual—and for that sense of divine connection suggested by Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality, they usually end up settling for what seems the next best thing: sex or religion.

The amorous scrimmage between male and female in these taut, intense stories is a contest that leaves no one unmarked. The hapless ministers in Borofka's memorable collection find that their daily grind of professional piety leaves them with more questions than answers. The men and boys in Hints of His Mortality are always aware of their flaws, for Borofka's vital characters have the capacity to register the shadows of their every blemish. Like Ferguson of the title story, haunted for twenty years by his failures of conscience, each protagonist experiences the inexorable fallibility of his own nature, agonizes over his moral weakness, and longs for escape from this life in which “our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." Yet each is redeemed by his ongoing struggle for compassion and understanding.

About this title

About the Author

David Borofka teaches composition and literature at Kings River Community College.

Reviews

The 14 stories in this accomplished collection, which won the 1996 Iowa Short Fiction Award, hurl themselves again and again against the same theme with nobly quixotic persistence. How, asks Borofka, do we console ourselves for our greatest disappointment?the failure of our lives, and ourselves, to rise to the level of our hopes and dreams? Using Wordsworth's famous "Ode, Intimations of Immortality" as epigraph and inspiration, Borofka is astonishingly good at sounding the depths of his characters' despair without ever becoming depressing, proving again that simply testifying to the struggle can be curative. The collection abounds with adulterous husbands, inadequate fathers and pastors with feet of clay all struggling to come to terms with their shortcomings. In "A Blessing," a husband finds his marriage strained when his wife suffers a miscarriage, bringing up unresolved memories from his own childhood. In "Reflected Music," a college student suffers an identity crisis after a breakup with his girlfriend and the advent of a mysterious new housemate. One especially rich character, whom we meet in both "The Blue Cloak" and "Mid-Clair," is Professor Grimshaw, miserable in a severely low-wattage academic career, and his beautiful, passive wife, Clair. Grimshaw "had joined himself to her precisely for her lack of complexity, recognizing that his own ego, shaky enough even when accorded center stage and top billing, would not tolerate the competition of sharing." However, Clair turns out to have unexpected powers of consolation and intuition, providing a much-needed moral compass when Grimshaw fails her. Borofka's writing is sometimes prissy and inert ("the dark hairs protruding from the mole waved in the air like the feelers of some sort of bug"), but the intensity of his stories is almost palpable.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A thematically unified and smartly arranged debut of 14 stories-- one of those rare collections in which the sum is greater than its parts. Borofka's mostly male protagonists approach midlife with a sense of having failed--not just at their professions, or as husbands and fathers, but as decent men. Sex plays no little part in their guilt: The narrator of the fine title piece, a 38-year-old ``man without a conscience of his own,'' realizes that, even though he's survived a plane crash, it does not absolve him of his sins, especially his recent adultery. When a minister's pass at his secretary is rejected, he accepts an unrelated staph infection as divine punishment (``The Whole Lump''). In ``Prologue,'' an unfaithful husband, a failed writer turned insurance salesman, finally confesses to his angry wife. Some of Borofka's stories document scenes from the lives of men struggling to understand the opposite sex: In ``Reflected Music,'' a college student begins to understand ``the complications of intimacy''; in ``The Summers of My Sex,'' the narrator records scenes (unsexy ones) from his erotic development, many from summers spent with his mother's all-female family; and in ``Sisters,'' a narrator reflects on the women in his life: his wife and three daughters, the aunt who raised him, and the reckless mother who abandoned him. Borofka's moral vision includes matters of faith as well: Disillusioned ministers turn up in a number of stories. In ``The Girl on the Highway,'' a crisis of faith results from a young pastor's freak accident; in ``Epilogue,'' an Episcopal priest confesses his infidelity to his pragmatic brother. A typical liberal-secular couple in ``The Children's Crusade'' are bewildered by their daughter's religiosity after she's enrolled in a parochial school--a saintliness that's disrupted by her first period. Borofka steers artfully and intelligently through a variety of collisions of faith and sex, creating a memorable work and an exceptional debut. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Borofka's first collection, winner of the 1996 Iowa Short Fiction Award, truthfully shows the complexities of the most intimate family relations. His stories are told from the perspective of men (and a few boys) who are at a loss to fully connect with the women in their lives. His clear prose often sparkles with unexpected metaphor and insight. We believe in his characters?a man who unapologetically loves his beautiful, sexually voracious, yet dim wife; a father contemplating exposing his child to the potential pain and anguish of the world; a minister telling his brother about the woman (not his wife) he loves. All his stories resonate with truth and depth of feeling. Highly recommended.?Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Idaho Lib., Moscow
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0877455570
• ISBN 13: 9780877455578
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 252