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The Least You Need to Know. (Original writing);
Abstract
The Least You Need to Know is a collection of nine short stories. The first four are first person stories in which the narrators reflect on choices between cruelty and compassion, A young boy confronts his father's breakdown in the title story. In "Rock, Scissors, Paper," a foster child must choose between his desire to fit in at his new school and his compassion for another outcast child. The son in "The Genius of War" must accept the life his father has planned for him, and the young narrator of "Cancer" learns the alienating power of illness. A second group of stories focuses on married couples coming to terms with the wearing away of romance and drama in their relationships. These are stories about the courage it takes to accommodate those losses and the small graces that appear to fill what time has eroded. A farm wife, in "Small Facts," rediscovers love at a time when her husband needs her most. An elderly couple, in "Secrets," define their love at the end of their lives. In "Mind the Gap," a weak husband, out of compassion for his strong-willed wife, refuses his opportunity to reverse roles. The narrator of "Do Not Disturb" encounters menace in a Mississippi motel and confronts his own humanity. The final story in the collection, "The Price Is the Price," takes up questions of identity, greed, and social responsibility, as a Jewish patriarch struggles to reclaim his son. Set in the 1950's, it uses the consumerism and the cold-war mistrust of the time as the genesis of its drama. This novella reinforces several of the concerns of the collection: the search for identity during adolescence; the difficulties between husbands and wives, fathers and sons; the brutality the characters often find necessary to the continuance of love.
Subject Area
American literature
Recommended Citation
Martin, Lee R, "The Least You Need to Know. (Original writing);" (1994). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9425297.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9425297