A. V. Laider

A. V. Laider is a short story by the English essayist and caricaturist Max Beerbohm, first published in June 1916 in the American magazine The Century, and later included in his 1919 collection Seven Men. The English original runs about 11,000 words. The story is told in the first person by a narrator named "Max." In February, recovering from influenza, he goes to rest at an old, quiet seaside hotel, where he meets a fellow guest, A. V. Laider. The two observe British reserve, staying under the same roof for days with hardly a word, until they happen to talk on the last night of their stay. The conversation moves from metaphysical argument to palmistry, and Laider tells his "secret": as a young man he was obsessed with palmistry and believed himself quite accurate, but on a train journey to his uncle's house, reading the palms of fellow passengers, he found that many of their life lines broke at the same point. He sensed disaster and yet, weak-willed, failed to pull the emergency cord; the accident duly occurred, and it became his lifelong guilt. A year later the narrator meets Laider again at the same hotel, and Laider claims the whole story was invented: he had never read anyone's palm. The novel offers no answer as to which is true, leaving the narrator and reader alike in doubt. With restrained humor, the work makes "belief and disbelief," "will and fate," and "fiction and reality" light yet sharp; it is one of Beerbohm's most frequently anthologized short stories.