Preferred Position — A Reader’s Guide

A Future of Enforced Leisure

The story’s premise is established through the couple’s morning routine. Les complains there is “not a darned thing to do,” and Janet worries that inactivity will lead to accusations of suicide—a crime punishable by slavery. The threat of slavery is treated as both absurd and desirable: Les muses that “slavery’d at least be a change,” while Janet reminds him that slaves are tortured. This exchange reveals a society where the only alternative to boredom is a worse fate. The characters are trapped not by technology but by a social system that has outlawed meaningful effort. Dryfoos does not explain how this world came to be; instead, he lets the dialogue imply a history of solved problems that have created new ones.

Domestic Automation as Satire

The automated home is a source of irritation rather than comfort. The bed’s cooing voice, the marionette’s theatrical coffee delivery, and the “film-dress” Janet wears all point to a world of superfluous design. Les calls the dolls “a nuisance” and prefers a “plain, automatic dispenser,” but Janet finds that even more boring. Their argument over appliances mirrors their larger dissatisfaction: they have the power to customize their environment, but no desire to engage with it. The technology is not malevolent—it is simply tiresome. Dryfoos uses these details to critique a consumer culture that has perfected convenience to the point of meaninglessness.

Marriage as a Mirror of Stagnation

The couple’s dynamic is central to the story’s tension. They bicker over trivialities—whether to get up, whether to eat—but their arguments are a ritual that fills time. Janet accuses Les of selfishness for complaining about his sixty-five remaining years, while she has seventy and cannot yet have her first child. This detail, dropped casually, hints at a world where reproduction is delayed and longevity is guaranteed. Their conflict is both petty and profound: they have no external challenges, so they turn on each other. The story’s title, Preferred Position, may refer to their desire for a different role in life—one that the future has denied them.

Dryfoos’s story is a satire of a utopia gone flat. It does not offer a solution or a dramatic escape; instead, it lingers on the small, sharp exchanges that define a marriage under the pressure of too much time. Readers should pay attention to how the author uses domestic details—the bed, the doll, the pills—to build a world that feels both familiar and alien. The humor is dry, the tension real, and the ending, though not included here, is likely to be as ambivalent as the opening.

Reading Preferred Position, I remembered afternoons at my grandmother’s, watching her fiddle with the thermostat while complaining about nothing. That same hollow restlessness surfaced years later in Theft, where the characters circle their own emptiness with clenched hands. Both books feel like overheard arguments in a room too quiet to ignore, and I sat with that unease long after closing them. Theft — Inside the Classic reminded me how we often mistake boredom for peace.