Friday from the Archives: “Everyone Is Some Kind of Animal” a short story by Daniel Wallace
with art by Bob Trotman in NCLR 2013
The North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame announced this biennial cohort of writers last week. We are proud to partner with the North Carolina Writers’ Network and NC Humanities to honor D. G. Martin, Michael Parker, Shannon Ravenel, David Sedaris, and Daniel Wallace at the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines later this year.
We published a remembrance of prolific mystery author Margaret Maron written by D.G. Martin in our Winter 2022 issue. We’ve published numerous pieces by Michael Parker. While we haven’t had the pleasure (yet) of publishing work by Shannon Ravenel, we certainly have covered numerous books published by her at Algonquin Books. We’ve published reviews about four of David Sedaris‘s books. And we’ve published numerous essays about Daniel Wallace‘s work–including four books reviews, too–but the only creative writing we’ve published to date was his short story “Everyone is Some Kind of Animal” in our 2013 issue.
Wallace’s main character, Bronfman, has won an award. What award? Doesn’t matter; he never tells us. Bronfman is so nondescript that knowing the award would actually give the reader an unnecessary extraneous detail that might ruin the story.
The story moves on Bronfman wanting to tell someone his award news. However, “Bronfman was a reserved man, private, polite, almost clinically shy, who had never had the opportunity to remove himself from the limelight, but who, given the opportunity, certainly would have done so. On the other hand, to keep the news entirely to oneself was the same sort of pretense. It suggested there was nothing to it at all, and an award, by its very nature, had something to it. An award distinguished you from everyone else who didn’t get the award, and to hoard that information – yes, to hoard it – suggested the recipient thought so little of it that he wouldn’t
take even a moment to share the tidings with a friend. All Bronfman needed now was a friend.”
Elaine Thomas, in her NCLR Online review of This Isn’t Going to End Well, Wallace’s 2023 Algonquin-published book, wrote “Is it even possible to understand the hidden inner workings of another person, particularly one who wishes not to be fully seen?” To some extent, it seems as if Wallace has been writing around this theme for a decade. We will hear more about his body of work (so far) at the Hall of Fame ceremony.
Read Wallace’s story on ProQuest. Add the 2013 issue to your collection today!
