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Article: Disturbing images and amatory angst
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- August 26, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright (null) Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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Shuffle
By Leonard Michaels.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $17.95.
Shuffle is just the fourth book in a highly acclaimed 20-year
career during which Leonard Michaels has become our most visible,
visceral recorder of urban Jewish angst derived from Kafka. Michaels
is a darker Philip Roth, a sexier Saul Bellow, a comparatively kinder
and gentler Jerzy Kosinski.
Its predecessors were two deservedly praised collections of
short stories (Going Places, 1969; I Would Have Saved Them If I
Could, 1975) and one bad novel (The Men's Club, 1981). Michaels's
stories are swiftly elliptical, unsettling transcriptions of
burdensome memories, brief encounters, doomed relationships -
battlefield reports ...