Storytelling Grandfather - Author?
May 27, 2009 7:15 PM   Subscribe

Can anyone identify a short story or teleplay with the following plot or some variant thereof: A grandfather frequently tells his grandchildren about his experiences in the Revolutionary War, pointing to a general's portrait hanging over his fireplace as he sits in his rocking chair. He has one favorite grandson, who grows tired of the grandfather's story.

The grandson researches and finds that the general in the portrait is not so brave as the grandfather makes him out to be. During the next telling of the story, the grandson interrupts his grandfather and corrects him with the truth -- whereupon the grandfather takes down the portrait and never tells the story again. Years later, as an old man himself, the grandson is sitting in the same rocking chair, surrounded by his grandchildren, goes to tell the story, looks up to the blank space above the fireplace, is filled with a profound sense of loss/regret, and falls silent.

A friend in Israel said he thinks he once saw this on American television. I could only offer the similar story -- but with a very different moral -- in "The Four Feathers," where Harry Faversham "heroically" corrects the old general's embroidered account of the Battle of Balaclava. Hawthorne has a book of stories on a grandfather's chair, but nothing like this. I also tried Washington Irving and Benet -- no luck.
posted by CarolynAMW to Writing & Language 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
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