Richard Russo's TRAJECTORY - 4 Short Stories on a Course Driven by Academia, Aging and Reflections

The four short stories in Richard Russo's "Trajectory" or loosely connected by middle aged characters who are reflecting back on their lives acknowledging where they took a definitive turn driving the trajectory to where they are now.  Russo (b Amer 1949) is a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist ("Empire Falls") who began his literary profession as a Univ. Prof. of creative writing.  He went on to a lucrative career as a novelist, short story writer and screenwriter.   The first 2 stories "Horseman" and "Voice" are imbedded within a university and the main characters are both Professors of Literature.  In "Horseman" Prof. Janet Moore (a tribute to novelist Laurie Moore) has just confronted a cocky male student with proof of his plagiarism.  "Horseman" would likely earn a gifted student a B not an A for its heavy handed metaphors of opaqueness, transparencies and hinderances to connecting.  "…When she got out she could see her husband and son through the dining room window…So this, she thought, was heartbreak…Even now her inclination was to remain right where she was with a pane of glass between herself and her husband and child, safe from them and they from her…Robbie was now bent over the dining room window, trying to peer out.  He'd no doubt heard her car pull in and was wondering what she could be doing out there in the dark and wet."  Russo uses this story to project his syllabus of conundrums.  His 2nd story "Voice" is an inventive & sensitive portrait of a middle aged man accepting his failures & fallouts while retaining hope of a fortuitous future.  Nate is a former college prof. whose had traumas with his students & now reluctantly retired.  This leaves Nate the opportunity to join his estranged brother Julian on a Venice Biennale trip.  Siblings are also subjects in "Intervention".  Siblings share a strong history and then sprout off in different paths.  Julian is derisive of Nate & his career causing him to question his choices.  "Nate's own self-doubt, his secret fear that he's led a life other than the one he was intended for, following the wrong trajectory entirely."  Although Nate feels assured Julian took the right fork.  "Say this for Julian, a career salesman:  he's lived the life he was meant to live and followed the only trajectory that truly suits him, from start to finish."  "Intervention" is a humorous, bitter-sweet coming to grip story of aging.  Ray is a realtor recently diagnosed with cancer.  "He was about to become yet another bare-assed, middle-aged man, the kind who didn't get to make decisions."  The hallmark of Russo's clever writing style is his incorporation of eccentric & likable characters whom we'd share a beer with but perhaps only one before departing.  "Milton and Marcus" is Russo's parodied jab at Hollywood's unscripted rules of script writing.  TRAJECTORY is another hallmark of a masterful writer who captures life's wry observations with equal measures of wit, wisdom and delight.   His writing is also lofty with poetic prose.  "Is it better to be known whole or to conceal what makes us unworthy of love."