I don't know exactly what it is is, but I did not enjoy Protraits from Life as much as I thought I would. Grey Owl is a cool story that I thought would go somewhere, but instead we got a couple of dudes telling eac other obvious things like, hey, isn't that town really far north, or biographical facts which they both obviousl knew but had to repeat to each other in the form of a question, or inquiring statement, so as to let the reader know the story. It's sort of like when in a crime show the person turns to his/her partner and says, now we'll run run this to lab, and see if blah blu blah adds up. And the partner in real life would respond, I know that! We've been working together for ten years.