From Publishers Weekly
This slight, rambling collection of essays by the author of the novel The Men's Club will probably only be appreciated by his die-hard fans. Michaels praises Hemingway, Walt Frazier and Joe DiMaggio for their "great style," which, he believes, is a trait that "illuminates relations among things--sounds, colors, words, bodily motions." In other essays, he touches on the mystique of cigarettes, retells the biblical story of Jonah and discusses the difference between "practical reading," which he defines as the reading of road signs, menus, newspapers and other media whose function is to impart meaning, and "disinterested reading," which includes poetry and is concerned with revelation. Personal essays tell of his barber father who wasn't happy that his son was dating a gentile, but said he would dance at his wedding even if he married out of the faith, and of his mother's father, mother and sister who were murdered by the Nazis. Michaels's most successful piece recounts the summer he served as a busboy at a honeymoon resort in the Catskill mountains, and how a newlywed fell madly in love with her waiter, a Jewish dental student who looked like an SS officer.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Michaels is an English professor at Berkeley and an award-winning writer of essays and fiction ( Shuffle , LJ 9/1/90; Sylvia , Mercury House, 1992). Fourteen essays are collected here for an unknown reason; most of them have been published previously. Michaels can write with honesty, humor, perception, and striking description, as when he compares a college roommate to a "Victorian government building." One of the most moving essays is "To Feel These Things," the title piece, ostensibly about his mother but really about his own experience of the Holocaust. Even as a child growing up in New York--where he had to drink his milk before going to a war movie--what happened in Europe was real in his life. Other essays talk about his sad experience with Hollywood and his annoyance with the modern use of the word relationship. Primarily for comprehensive or specialized collections.
- Nancy Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, N.C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Nancy Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, N.C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
