![A man in a bedroom looking down at a dog.]()
The story beginsin the year 2000, when a young man gets to know Mr. V., a distinguished elderly European whom the young man thinks of as a survivor, a “subject of history.” Mr. V. has lived through the bad old days—the World Wars, the gulags, the camps—and, the young man believes, has learned something valuable, has become rich in experience. As the story goes on, decades pass, and the young man is no longer so young; in fact, he’s become a lot like Mr. V., passing from well to sick. He, too, is now rich in experience. This description may make the story sound elegiac, but “The Time Being” is spiky and witty, told in one-liners and wry juxtapositions. Mr. V. himself remains an enigma, a figure of projection not just for the young man but even for strangers: “V. declined to pick up his dog’s number twos. The guys who sprayed the sidewalk clean every morning admired him for this: he was, they claimed, ‘old school.’ ” The story isn’t cynical about Mr. V., however—or about the young man. As O’Neillexplains, the protagonist is “increasingly overwhelmed and intrigued by the wonder of it all.” —Willing Davidson, senior editor | 
