Man Descending | Themes/Characters
Although most often about victims — people caged by their limited imaginations, personal problems, and paranoid feelings — Vanderhaeghe's stories are suffused with sympathy or compassion for the vulnerable. The existential gloom is somewhat dispelled by a wry humor in the main characters, whose perceptions of reality, although occasionally wacky, unhinged, or eccentric, are tempered by simple urges for love, security, and acknowledgment.
If pessimism is viewed as a prelude to a new world — why write if there is no hope? — then one would certainly be justified to call...
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