The Elephant Vanishes: Stories

A university student in his early twenties works for a year at the “The Pen Society,” a company that helps members improve their letter-writing skills. As a “Pen Master,” the narrator responds to letters from members, providing corrections and comments to help them improve. After leaving the company, the student accepts an invitation from one of his correspondents, a 32-year-old woman with no children. The woman promises to cook the narrator a hamburger steak (the subject of their last correspondence, quoted at the beginning of the story).

The narrator enjoys his dinner with the woman as the two discuss literature and writing. The narrator praises the strengths of the woman’s writing, telling her he enjoyed her letters, even though he “could hardly remember anything she had written” (194). Years later, the narrator continues to think of the woman when he passes by her neighborhood and looks up at the windows of her apartment building, trying to remember which one is hers. He says that “the central question” (194) of the piece is whether he should have slept with her, a question he still debates.