Stories Of An Imaginary Childhood (Library of American Fiction) [Paperback]

Melvin Jules Bukiet (Author)

Book Description

Series: Library of American Fiction | Publication Date: August 26, 2002

In Stories of an Imaginary Childhood Melvin Jules Bukiet inscribes the world that might have been his own if not for the catastrophe that destroyed most of Jewish life in eastern Europe during the 1940s. Set before the Holocaust in the tiny Polish shtetl of Proszowice, each interconnected story follows the young protagonist through the pleasures and humiliations of childhood and the rites of manhood, as he fights against historical, social, and psychological forces that threaten to pull him down.

"Bukiet proves that he is an expert at the [short story] form. His stories lift and soar, encompassing a world of truth in just a few pages. His characters have flesh and life. . . . Bukiet’s topics are varied and universal: first love, growing up, trying to get along with people who are different. Each of these is approached with great humor and a deep respect for life experience."—Daniel Neman, Richmond News Leader

"Jewish-American fiction of a new order, one able to bring the best that has been thought and said about voice and literary texture to the service of a world with richer meaning and a deeper resonance."—Sanford Pinsker, Midstream

"Bukiet is enchanting, original, and thoroughly irresistible in any disguise. Stories of an Imaginary Childhood is an extraordinary achievement, an immensely enjoyable collection of truly remarkable tales."—Susan Miron, Miami Herald

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this well-intentioned but overwritten effort, ultimately a pallid imitation of the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bukiet ( Sandman's Dust ) conjures a Polish shtetl circa 1928. The narrator of 12 linked stories is a precocious Jewish boy who gets into myriad scrapes and who observes his elders with a wry amusement. He makes "sounds like the slaughter of swine" on his new violin but his proud parents think he's a virtuoso; when he trades his patchwork quilt for a young gypsy's bicycle, his family looks at him as if he were "Esau caught trading his birthright for a bowl of pottage" and the less-than-thrilled gypsies compel him to bicycle on a tightrope; he plays Cyrano as he scribbles love letters for a man whose obvious poverty never tarnishes his reputation as a millionaire ("We'll never have the money he hasn't got," says the narrator's father); he lusts after Rebecca, a Jewish whore who proudly recounts the story of Hanukkah for Polish scoffers, and helps to deliver her illegitimate baby. The collection has bite only when Bukiet humanizes Zalman the gravedigger, a dreamy philosopher, and when the narrator, hallucinating, believes himself to be Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, and others who persecuted the Jews.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“Melvin Jules Bukiet . . . writing about an extinct world he never knew and never will, appears to have devised a new and haunting way of recalling what must never be forgotten.”—Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 204 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (August 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299180743
• ISBN-13: 978-0299180744
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,093,818 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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