A story in The New Yorker that reminds me of Dubliners

Very short and intriguing story this week in the New Yorker: Paul Theroux's "Action" - like much of his recent fiction that I've seen, it feels vaguely autobiographical although that may be an illusion - isn't all fiction autobiographical to some extent, in that ever story is part of the autobiography of the author, even if drawn only from imagination and research - if it's even possible to draw "only" from imagination and research ... In any event, the story is a man's reflection on an episode from his youth: a somewhat isolated and protected child, mother died when he was ten, widowed father watches over him (too) closely, father is taciturn and distant emotionally, child works in father's shoe store, a declining business, keeps him removed from friends and sports, takes a trip into Boston to pick up a package, which leads him to explore the darker areas of the city, pays a visit to an older (20 something) woman whom an older friend had introduced him to, she's obviously a prostitute tho he's not aware of this, he sits in her apt drinking lemonade, an older man - a john? pimp? boyfriend? - comes in and punches the kid in the mouth (while he's drinking), limps home to dad w/out the package, dad intuits everything. The story reminds me of some of the great stories in Dubliners - even though Theroux is looking back from a much longer vantage point - beautifully crafted and paced, an ending that seems both conclusively revelatory but also open-ended and suggestive, the struggle against and love for the distant and disappointing father, the tentative push for independence and sexual awakening, the look back at childhood for a single and transformative moment. Theroux has been a very productive and varied writer, which in a way hasn't helped him - he's hard to place - is he a travel writer? a writer of serious nonfiction? of literary fiction? - but this and other recent stories I've seen of his suggest he's really finding a late-career voice in the short story form and we ought to pay his writing a new attention.