You Like It Darker

Stories like “Two Talented Bastids,” “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” “Finn,” “On Slide Inn Road,” and “The Answer Man” use the recurring motif of luck. Bad circumstances precipitate many of the stories, prompting the protagonists to wonder why they suffer while others prosper. In “Two Talented Bastids,” the male alien visitor remarks that the aid Laird and Butch extended to Ylla was a matter of luck. The implication that Laird and Butch activated their talent using the aliens’ gift suggests that their success as artists was a matter of luck by extension. Laird’s son, Mark, later reckons with the idea that, unlike his father, he isn’t fated to succeed in his craft. Similarly, Danny Coughlin from “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” and the Brown family from “On Slide Inn Road” are suddenly thrust into precarious situations that continually worsen. Danny reports the location of a murder victim yet is pursued by an investigator who wants an easy conviction. The Brown family’s trip is stalled when the shortcut they take leads to a dead end where bad luck awaits them in the form of two thieves who intend to take their car and leave them for dead.

Conversely, the protagonists of “Finn” and “The Answer Man” demonstrate how luck, though powerful, is a force that one can overcome. Finn decides that instead of waiting for God to give him good luck in return for all the bad luck he has experienced, he should make his luck. Phil Parker similarly realizes that he can’t outsmart destiny by knowing the future. Both of them come to terms with the idea that the forces that shape life are greater than them, but this also gives them the peace to defy the notion that they have no control over their fate, resolving the theme of Bad Luck as Destiny.