Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers the story, Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor.


Blumfeld’s balls are on the loose. He manages to hide them from the charwoman, but later offers them to her son, who is too slow on the uptake. The janitor’s twin daughters, however, are game to go.

Back at the office, Blumfeld bemoans his position, seated between his two standing assistants who are always bouncing around the building, teasing the seamstresses.

Bawdy? Early dementia? Unfinished manuscript? Or something else?

The most poignant part of this story for me is the little boy, both deformed and stupid, as the chosen benefactor of his balls (that he leaves behind when he goes to work). In this the old man shows at least a weak but fleeting pretension of the paternal. In the final analysis, for me, the only characters worth their weight in ink are the two sisters of whom one supposes will also tire and abandon in short order.

Bawdy? Yes, and no.

This story is, to me, perfect. Nothing is needed more or less than what is supplied. It made me laugh aloud in several places. I enjoyed every element, the dilemma of whether to get a dog and the image it gives of Blumfeld, the dilemma of the balls, and the dilemmas of his working life, all full of absurdity, yet all calculated to be painful and tedious to just such a man as he.

It did--like all the other stories--make me wonder what this would have become if it were developed into a novel, but it's not necessary for me to imagine such a thing. I'm satisfied with what I got. For instance, if there were a novel, I wouldn't expect it to revisit or resolve any of the scenes we have experienced... I don't need to know how the girls' pleading with the charwoman played out, or whether the balls in the wardrobe were somehow disposed of, or how he would react to their absence... it's the frozen and unresolved moment of his departure from the apartment in just such circumstances which captures the imagination.