"Seasons Clear, and Awe" - Chapter 3

We continue PILCROW’s Inaugural Serialized Novel Contest: over the next three weeks, we’ll serialize the first few chapters of our three Finalist’s unpublished novels, and then subscribers (both free and paid) will vote on a Winner to be fully serialized here on the Substack (Finalists are awarded $500; the Winner $1,000.)

Our Finalists for this round:

1. Seasons Clear, and Awe by Matthew Gasda

   Chapter 1

   Chapter 2

2. Mites by Gregory Freedman

3. Notes on the State of Virginia by Michael Pilarz

We’re excited to have all of you as a part of this endeavor to forge a new path for fiction on Substack. If you believe in what we’re doing, please consider offering a paid subscription.

“Seasons Clear, and Awe” chronicles three decades in the life of the Gazda family, whose children inherit not wealth but something more dangerous: their parents’ unlived ambitions and their mother’s gift for psychological dissection. As Stephen and Elizabeth grow from precocious children into neurotic artists in their thirties, Matthew Gasda reveals how post-industrial, late 20th century America created a generation too intelligent for ordinary happiness, too self-aware for decisive action: suspended between the working-class pragmatism of their fathers and the creative and spiritual aspirations of their mothers, capable of everything except building lives.

Matthew Gasda is the founder of the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research and the author of many books, including the recent novel The Sleepers and Writer’s Diary.

⚬─────────✧─────────⚬

—2001—

Michael took the lawnmower out of the shed, or out of the garage. It was a Sunday morning. Stephen had a baseball game that night. It was late May.

Michael was 51 years old. He was wearing shorts, sneakers, a Jimmy Buffett T-shirt, with his backwards bright red Phillies cap (the same hat he’d had for 15 years, with the old school logo). He’d lost some hair on his head, which was also going grey, no longer the black, thick hair he had when Stephen had been born. His neck was still relatively thick, still an athlete’s neck. He was still strong and thin, active, especially in the summers. He still threw batting practice a few times a week and golfed several times a month through the summer. He and Adele would often take a walk after dinner, and if he found himself sitting too long watching TV at night, he would do 10 or 15 or 20 push-ups before bed, just ...