DEGAS AT THE GAS STATION

Miscellaneous essays on travel, family, and other topics.

The title essay, one of three dozen, is a slice-of-life reminiscence of a moment with the author’s young daughter, fresh from a tap dance lesson and drinking a soda in a pose and light that, Beller writes, might have inspired Edgar Degas to pick up his brush “if he went on a field trip to the Stop & Shop.” Beller’s wife, the constant voice of reason throughout, reminds him that Degas didn’t have much regard for his subjects, but no matter. It’s a nice enough vignette, but it doesn’t amount to much. Other of the essays have an academic, workshoplike feel, and there’s not much there, either; Beller’s musings on the meaning of the Bad News Bears film franchise seem particularly slight in that regard. Somewhat more successful is a piece that traces memory through the fog of time, in this instance the author’s recollections of being busted at a Kinks concert in 1981, which occasioned an embarrassed correction when he incorrectly credited the rousting to the NYPD. “Maybe this is what happens at a certain point in life, when one’s faith in one’s own memory begins to wobble and a sense of incredulity at what you know happened rises up to challenge your own version of the facts,” he writes in a footnote. The best pieces move beyond the POV of a put-upon professor to real-world ruefulness, as when Beller recounts trying to chase down inner-city kids who’ve stolen cash and a phone from him. A doubting detective wonders what he’s doing in that bad part of town in the first place, saying of Beller’s sesquipedalian reply, “It’s my experience that the longer and more convoluted someone’s answer is, the less likely I am to believe them. And that was pretty convoluted.” They’re the sharpest lines in the book.

A mixed bag, with few standouts.