“Not for nothing have writers been called wordsmiths for centuries. The craft of writing demands all the specialized training and physical stamina of the blacksmith. The serious writer sweats at the forge of his imagination while hammering out sentences on the anvil of language, and so on. Where better for an aspiring writer to earn his daily bread than right in the blacksmith’s shop?”
~ “The Ballad of Timothy Touchett”
Best known for immersive novels like "A Gentleman in Moscow" and "Lincoln Highway," Amor Towles has gifted the audience with short stories in "Table for Two."
The tales span the touching ("I Will Survive" and the near-perfect "The Bootlegger"), the foreboding ("The Ballad of Timothy Touchett" and "The DiDomenico Fragment"), the absorbing ("The Line"), and the shocking ("Hasta Luego").
“Suffice it to say that at the fork in the road, offer a young man an extra fifty dollars a week in exchange for a modest adjustment to his dreams, and you will have him by the throat.”
“The Ballad of Timothy Touchett”
Towles separates the collection into New York (six stories) and Los Angeles (one story), with a theme of limos serving as connective tissue. At nearly 220 pages, the L.A. tale -- "Eve in Hollywood" -- is in the novelette/novel range, and seems to depend a bit on knowledge of a separate book ("Rules of Civility") to fully grasp.
“Because if we don’t stare down the things that make us want to look away, then the world is just a mirage.”
~ “Eve in Hollywood”
Perhaps the noir-ish "Eve in Hollywood" would have been better treated as a sequel instead of being included here, but beyond that quibble, "Table for Two" is an engrossing read, full of Towles's tight prose and beautiful narratives.
“For not only was the music uplifting, each individual phrase seemed to follow so naturally, so inevitably upon the last that a slumbering spirit deep within you, suddenly awakened, was saying: Of course, of course, of course …”
~ “The Bootlegger”
