The Man with a Grouch
1929
A trader in the South Seas loses his job just before Christmas. Christopher Flexner has spent years in tropical beauty watching ships pass, dreaming of England. When he's dismissed from his position, he drifts through the islands nursing his grievances while the sea and sky offer their usual indifferent splendor. Then he stumbles on a fortune, ambergris worth a small kingdom, and waits for happiness to arrive. It doesn't. The man's a grouch, and wealth won't fix that. Stacpoole's 1929 novella is a sharp, melancholy joke at humanity's expense: we imagine contentment lives just over the next horizon, whether that's home or riches or escape. But the grouch travels with us. For anyone who's ever thought 'if only I had X, I'd be content', this is the story that knows better.
