Showing results for "The Single Man" in Anthologies & Short Stories

Pete - an impetuous, avowedly self-absorbed writer - and Dave - a pithy banker with a "genius for generosity" - had maintained a close friendship since their first days at college. They stood as Best Man for each other; they are godfathers to each other's sons. That bond cracks during one visit in their mid-30s, and since then neither can say with any satisfaction why. In their ensuing letters, both men begin speaking with a candor they never shared face-to-face,

Is the black man who sends his children to a very white private school "a sell out"? Is the black man with a good job and a white wife, a "race betrayer"? The nameless black narrator has done all the above, dragging himself from an impoverished urban ghetto to an upper middle-class life. He has done everything to assimilate into polite white English society, playing strictly by "their rules". As he attends a polo match with "society's finest"; his mask is slipping; cracks are beginning to appear in his apparently perfect life.