Fabulous Small Jews (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "FELIX ARNSTEIN was dismantling his library..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Uncle Jack, Jack Rafter (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Switching gears after his nonfiction hit, Snobbery, Epstein has compiled a collection of short stories as thoughtful and arresting as its title (from a poem by Karl Shapiro). Whether they are in a nursing home, recovering from the loss of a spouse of 50 years, or looking back at marriages, shortcomings or missed opportunities, Epstein's characters are quirky, witty, resentful, fearful and cautiously hopeful as they face their future, or whatever they have left of it, in a world in which all the rules have changed. What distinguishes them as Jews in this universal situation is a certain wry outlook, a vernacular turn of phrase that carries the tang of its Yiddish origin, and a tendency to philosophize about the deeper questions of existence. "Coming In with Their Hands Up" is a touching tale of a bloodthirsty divorce lawyer who encounters heartbreak in his own marriage. In "Postcards," Seymour Hefferman, an acidulous and malicious failed poet, anonymously castigates cultural eminences when they offend his sensibilities, signing a Jewish name instead of his own; he finally gets his comeuppance. The eponymous Felix Emeritus, a cautious Buchenwald survivor who has never asked much of life, meets in an old-age home a bitter man who can't surmount his dark view of human nature. Mostly settled in Chicago, these 17 characters are no heroes, only reflective personalities-little people with big opinions-who have made their share of sacrifices. Like his emotionally candid, low-key protagonists, Epstein is intrinsically honest. Gratifying and genuine, this collection examines all sorts of responses to the encroachment of old age on human dignity.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Whether he's writing piquant criticism such as Snobbery: The American Version [BKL Jl 02] or fiction, Epstein brings zest and clarity to his ardent inquiry into how we attempt to make sense of life and peace with death. His fictional turf is Jewish Chicago, a vibrant domain in dramatic transition in this robust and involving short story collection. Epstein's narrators tend to be tough, hardworking, and solitary men who have survived poverty, the Holocaust, ruthless competition, and impossible domestic situations only to confront old age and a jittery new world that to their pragmatic eyes seems neurotic, flimsy, indulgent, and vacuous. Yet Epstein's heroes--guys like salesman Moe Bernstein, dry-cleaner mogul Artie Glick, a bartender, a scamming ex-con, and a few soulful academics--do not despair. They maintain their sense of humor, they take chances, they open their hearts, and they find life sweeter than ever before. As rich in clever banter as in philosophic musings, Epstein's funny and wise stories celebrate independence, the inner life, generosity of spirit, and rolling with the punches. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (July 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395944023
• ISBN-13: 978-0395944028
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #586,109 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chekhov in Chicago, July 21, 2003

By A Customer

I have enjoyed reading Joseph Epstein's essays, and there are two kinds that I especially admire. The first are the personal essays that are autobiographical and often very funny, and the second are the literary essays that are rather dark and certainly sobering. In these stories Epstein manages to combine elements of both the funny and the dark in a way that resembles Chekhov, without, obviously, rising quite to that level. He does, however, rise well above the many recent American short stories that seem to present little more than puzzling ephipanies. Instead he describes, with considerable respect, characters from ordinary bourgeois life in Chicago, and he actually tells stories about their lives. That alone is practically heroic, and deserves praise.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fabulous short stories, August 14, 2004

By	Vince Leo (minneapolis, mn USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Fabulous Small Jews (Paperback)

Although there are 15 stories listed in the table of contents, it's impossible to come up with a real total of all the narratives in Joseph Epstein's Fabulous Small Jews. Epstein uses stories for every possible function: to set a mood (a joke), to set a place (childhood memory), to describe a character (every character in this book receives a short bio). Reading Epstein is a little like wandering through a city without a map; one story ends and another begins and, slowly but surely, something of human experience becomes evident. Like Homer or the Brothers Grim, Epstein's stories read like they've accumulated through a dense oral culture before transcription. Of course they haven't, and that's one of the reasons this book is so good.

The other reason is that Epstein never forgets that, willful as people may be, human agency is only truly tested by fate, by what we never see coming around the corner till it changes our lives. Fabulous Small Jews revolves around some of the most difficult situations fate can come up with: bereavement, divorce, cancer, alzheimers, weariness of life. It's a messy world, and the only redeeming feature is that Epstein's characters never stop trying to do the right thing, never stop trying to wrest a livable destiny from a cruel fate. The fact that they manage to do just that may not live up to statistical analysis but it's the hallmark of great stories, and of the ways imagination reframes lived experience. It's also an indicatation of Epstein's generosity--both toward his characters and his readers. Dignified resolutions restore our ability to make hard decisions with courage, clarity, and hope; that doesn't necessarily make them happy endings. Luckily, Joseph Epstein knows the difference.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Old-fashioned stories of high quality, August 22, 2003

By A Customer

Epstein's work is old-fashioned in the best sense of the term. There is no "writers' school" trendiness here. Each story packs in a lifetime of detail about one or more characters, with plots that dwell on similar themes: Jews growing up in Chicago, illness and death, family tensions, the debt to high culture. On the surface this may seem repetitious, but it never is. Indeed, the literary cohesion of the stories is one of the charms of this collection -- it is not all over the place. Curiously, it reminds me in some ways of the stories of Louis Auchincloss; even though their two ethnic milieus are far apart, both writers share a profound sense of the moral dimension of life. This moving work is sensitive, humorous, gripping. In 340 pages we get the stuff of twenty novels, all propelled by a power of description that is continuously engrossing.