OK, Class, What Was the Mailman's Motivation?

When I was a teenager, I would occasionally peruse a book on how to write a short story or novel. Ninety-nine percent of these books are utterly useless, of course, and one recommendation that always struck me as amateurish and silly was to draw inspiration from real-life stories in the papers. But I'll be damned if this guy doesn't strike me as a potentially rich subject:

The postal service said Tuesday that Mr. Gagne had tucked away thousands of circulars and hundreds of letters in drawers and closets in his apartment.

The authorities found the mail on Friday, when a supervisor worried when Mr. Gagne did not show up for work found him dead in his apartment on the same street where he made his rounds in this affluent suburb of Boston. The police said he died of natural causes.

Some of the mail dates from the 1980’s, said Robert Cannon, a spokesman for the postal service, and about 90 percent of it was circulars flagged as undeliverable because of an address change. The postal service is trying to deliver the first-class letters and cards, none of which were opened, to their rightful recipients, but is having trouble because the letters are so old.