Gail Levin’s short story “The Preacher Collects” is told from the perspective of Arthayer R. Sandborn, a preacher who stole thousands of dollars worth of Edward Hopper’s early artwork from his childhood home and managed to not only sell it, but get it authenticated. While reading this story, I noticed two things. First, I noticed that while it was written in the first person, the events which unfolded were told in a very straightforward manner, with little involvement of the narrator’s reasoning, emotional state, or even his life outside of the crimes he committed. He felt shallow and one-dimensional, as if he were confessing to a series of events that he actually had no personal involvement in.
Next, I noticed that Gail Levin herself appears as a minor character in the story — she plays the role of a “too-curious” journalist who is undeniably wronged by her employer when he chooses to go along with Sandborn’s plan. These two things were connected in my mind when I learned that “The Preacher Collects” is based on a true story, which Levin herself played a part in. Levin paints a picture of Sandborn as a cold, emotionless liar and does little to develop his character, likely because she holds a personal grudge against him due to having lost her job at his hands. This presumption of his personality can be seen in lines like the following; “No one remembers Jo’s funeral. There wasn’t one. Who would have attended?” (162). This line is one of the few that displays any amount of internal reflection from Sandborn, and it portrays him as callous. After learning the backstory of this work, I lean towards the view that it is more an act of personal closure on something that the author had wanted to get off her chest, rather than an earnest piece of fiction writing.
I found your conclusion regarding this piece interesting. I did not think of the story like that!
Great observation about how the characters were written and the bias that was involved in writing this piece.