A Longing for Impossible Things: (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction)

A powerful short story collection that charts the yearning inherent in imperfect lives. Winner of the American Fiction Award for Short Story Fiction by the American Book Fest "I'm a seeker," the narrator of "My Life as a Mystic" says. "A watcher of the skies. A pilgrim and a wanderer. I don't know, I couldn't stand law school." Such are the polar sentiments of the characters in the stories of David Borofka's A Longing for Impossible Things, which charts the yearning inherent in imperfect lives. Taking their cue from Fernando Pessoa's "painful landscape" of longing for the impossible, the ministers and missionaries of "Fire" and "Coincidence" look for more than what they find in their respective theologies; they reject what they've been told in favor of what they feel. Meanwhile, everyday believers fall back upon their own intuition and pray for revelation to be forthcoming. Lovers are forced to recognize the finite limitations of their grand infatuations even as they hope for some small measure of long-lasting tenderness, while teenagers resign themselves to the inevitable disappointments of adult life, recognizing the threats that exist in a future that is yet to unfold. And, as the narrator of "Attachments for the Platonically Inclined" says in the context of a 300 game in bowling, "I can't help but be reminded of perfection when perfection was difficult to find. And impossible to hold onto. Reminded that there are moments when everything works as it is supposed to, a harmony beyond applause or appreciation from others."

Table of Contents:
My Life as a Mystic High School and the Mysteries of Everything Else Coincidence Spies O Perfect, Perfect Love! A Tale Told by Rube Goldberg Begins and Ends with Dogs Fire Next Day The Volcano Lover The Nothing between Us Christmas in Jonestown Retirement Dogs Attachments for the Platonically Inclined Acknowledgements

About the Author :
David Borofka taught at Reedley College for more than thirty-five years before retiring in 2019. The author of Hints of His Mortality and The Island, his work has appeared in Southern Review, Massachusetts Review, Shenandoah, Image, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere.

Review :
There is a good deal of failure and despair, misfortune, sickness and death. But Borofka is no cynic. The stories are often wonderfully funny. —Don Noble's Book Reviews, Alabama Public Radio Short story lovers can rejoice in this much-awaited collection, A Longing for Impossible Things, from the Iowa Short Fiction Award-winning David Borofka, a master of the form. Regardless of the failings of his narrators and assorted ne'er do well characters, these tales are told in a generous, recognizably human voice, marking Borofka as a writer in whose company you'll find deep pleasure. —Nancy Spiller, Complusive Reader The comedy of seeking is rarely so sympathetically portrayed as in Borofka's hands; he captures perfectly the poignancy of dopey mortals dreaming and scheming to reach the divine. —Peter Manseau, Image Journal