Both, Both, My Girl

Both, both, my girl: By foul play, as thou say’st, were we heaved thence, But blessedly holp hither.

-William Shakespeare,The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2.


He had first appeared in print when, to his surprise, The New Yorker accepted one of his stories while he was still in his twenties and then maybe five or six others over the next few years. They were ironic, graceful little glimpses of people falling in and out of love in Manhattan, where he had often fallen in and out of love himself, and their style was spare, translucent, wistful. Eventually a collection of them was published under the title Both, Both, My Girl, from Prospero’s answer to Miranda when she asks him if it was by blessed means or foul that they were washed up on their enchanted island. “Both, both is what all those stories are about,” he told his wife at the time. “It is also the story of my life.”

-Frederick Buechner,The Storm, 4.