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I was fortunate to get a great education at Princeton and I often have joked since then that I am not sure use I got out of an English degree with certificates in Creative Writing and French. My long-term aspiration leaving college was to become a screenwriter, so in that sense, it was certainly a practical decision. But my career thus far has actually been in tech sales, which has also provided its own sense of satisfaction. Ultimately, I’d like to make the largest impact I can on the lives of others, and I think delivering a top-notch solution to a customer is one way to do that.
A few years ago, I wrote my first book Authentic Selling: How to Use the Principles of Sales in Everyday Life. This was a great way to dip my toe in the water of becoming an author. In a way, it was actually the least risky way to do that because it married my current career (sales) with my long-term desire (writing).
Having gained that experience, I decided it was time to go a step further and publish my first work of fiction. How Boys Learn will come out in less than a month on February 1st, 2024 and is available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The book is adapted from my senior thesis at Princeton written under the same title under the tutelage of Edmund White, who graciously endorsed the stories.
All of the stories in the book are loosely based on some figment of my own experience. The common theme throughout the book is that each story focuses on a male protagonist who must wrestle with some internal conflict in an effort to find self-love.
If you are thinking about grabbing a copy, let me offer you a sneak peak into the seven stories that make up the collection.
- The Boy Who Always Cried
This story focuses on a doctor who is called in to treat a boy who will not stop crying. The story is told through the doctor’s journal entries, giving us an intimate look into his mind and how he reports on the occurrences of his life, both personal and professional. In the end, he is forced to grapple with questions about the goodness of himself and by extension, the goodness of humanity.
- The Bright Lights
Wrestling has been an important part of my life. I tried to evoke this through a story about a high school wrestler who is gearing up for a big match. The tale alternates between the protagonist’s voice as a teenager and his voice as an adult man speaking to a therapist with an air of nostalgia for his discipline as a youngster and looming questions about how to raise his son in the wake of pressures he faced from his own father as a high school wrestler.
- Why I Don’t Believe
In this story, a young boy goes on a vacation with his best friend’s family. On the cusp of adulthood as a thirteen year old who recently had his Bar Mitzvah, he discovers a disturbing secret about his best friend’s father that changes the lens through which he sees the world.
- Love’s the Greatest Thing That We Have (I’m waiting for that feeling)
This is admittedly the weirdest story in the book and perhaps the hardest to follow. It showcases the life of a man who lives in a dystopian all-male society, having been separated in an effort to keep “undesirable” people from re-producing. He speaks in a broken language due to his fractured education and details a strange event that makes him debate his allegiance to the government versus his own personal desires to break free.
- This Is the Story That I Wrote For This Week
With all of these serious stories, a little levity is needed. Based somewhat upon my own experience in creative writing workshops, this narrator humorously brings us into his creative writing class where we meet a myriad of strange characters, often unfairly stereotyped by the narrator. Our protagonist will eventually learn a valuable lesson about the creative process and valuing the feedback of others.
- Kicking Stones
In a small, decrepit town in rural Ohio, four young boys are excited to watch their childhood hero, Diego Flores, gear up for a title fight in boxing. Winning or losing the fight could be the ultimate litmus test for whether or not they have hopes of making it out of their hometown someday.
- A Boy’s School
When I was a senior in high school, I got into a bad car accident. I was overwhelmed by how much love and support I received when I came back to school. This story follows the lives of the boys in a small school when one of their classmates winds up in a coma after getting into a bad car accident. They learn many valuable lessons and they are forced to challenge many of the underlying assumptions about themselves and how to treat one another.
Jeff Kirchick 