Kirjahaku

Leonard Michaels was a writer of unfailing emotional honesty. His memoirs, originally scattered through his story collections, are among the most thrilling evocations of growing up in the New York of the 1950s and '60s--and of continuing to grow up, in the cultural turmoil of the '70s and '80s, as a writer, teacher, lover, and reader. The same honesty and excitement shine in Michaels's highly personal commentaries on culture and art. Whether he's asking what makes a story, reviewing the history of the word "relationship," or reflecting on sex in the movies, he is funny, penetrating, surprising, always alive on the page. The Essays of Leonard Michaels is the definitive collection of his nonfiction and shows, yet again, why Michaels was singled out for praise by fellow writers as diverse as Susan Sontag, Larry McMurtry, William Styron, and Charles Baxter. Beyond autobiography or criticism, it is the record of a sensibility and of a style that is unmatched in American letters.

First published in 1981, Leonard Michaels's The Men's Club is a scathing, pitying, absurdly dark and funny novel about manhood in the age of therapy. "The climax is fitting, horrific, and wonderfully droll" (The New York Times Book Review). Seven men, friends and strangers, gather in a house in Berkeley. They intend to start a men's club, the purpose of which isn't immediately clear to any of them; but very quickly they discover a powerful and passionate desire to talk.

First acclaimed as a story-length memoir, then expanded into a novel, "Sylvia "draws us into the lives of a young couple whose struggle to survive Manhattan in the early 1960s involves them in sexual fantasias, paranoia, drugs, and the extreme intimacy of self-destructive violence.Reproducing a time and place with extraordinary clarity, Leonard Michaels explores with self-wounding honesty the excruciating particulars of a youthful marriage headed for disaster.

Leonard Michaels was a master of the short story. His collections are among the most admired, influential, and exciting of the last half century. The Collected Stories brings them back into print, from the astonishing debut Going Places (1969) to the uncollected last stories, unavailable since they appeared in The New Yorker, Threepenny Review, and Partisan Review. At every stage in his career, Michaels produced taut, spare tales of sex, love, and other adult intimacies: gossip, argument, friendship, guilt, rage. A fearless writer--"destructive, joyful, brilliant, purely creative," in the words of John Hawkes--Michaels probed his characters' motivations with brutal humor and startling frankness; his ear for the vernacular puts him in the company of Philip Roth, Grace Paley, and Bernard Malamud. Remarkable for its compression and cadences, his prose is nothing short of addictive. The Collected Stories is a landmark. "Leonard Michaels's stories stand alongside those of his best Jewish contemporaries -- Grace Paley and Philip Roth." -- Mona Simpson, The New York Times Book Review

Michaels, one of the most highly regarded contemporary American literary figures and widely read by the discerning public, has long been regarded as a master of the short story. His stature can only be enhanced by this gathering of the best of his previous work as well as new stories, all of them written within the period of the early 1960s to the 1990s. Love and sexuality are the twin themes he continues to mine, and the specific situations he creates to explore these themes pinpoint in the sheerest of prose the absolute truth about relationships. Michael's trenchant, direct, and lyrical style, with not one word wasted, works as a tight springboard for conveying his vast knowledge about why we love who we love. No library's short story collection is complete without this career-defining compilation.

"Mansklubbenär en rolig och samtidigt deprimerande satir om det amerikanska 70-talets medvetna medelklass. Den är mycket vackert skriven, med en prosa fylld av halsbrytande liknelser." BTJ”Leonard Michaels skriver prosa av utsökt klarhet.” Ian McEwan”Tjechov och Kafka, med ett stänk av Chaucer, hade kunnat skriva Mansklubben. Den är lysande.” The New York Times”Väldigt mycket 1970-tal. Väldigt underhållande.” Västerbottens-kuriren”Det är hisnande läsning. Man baxnar, rodnar, vill fly bort. Men det går inte. Det avskalade språket, de träffsäkra porträtten och den dräpande humorn gör boken till en märklig bladvändare.” Svenska Dagbladet”Männens berättelser är framskrivna med tonträff och precision och just med den där typen av udda detaljer som får bra historier att fastna på läsarens inre näthinna. […] Det är som en räcka av mininoveller, fullsprängda med suggestiva bilder och elegant sammanvävda.” Landskrona PostenSju män träffas i en villa i Berkeley. Det är sent sjuttiotal och det pågår en revolution, kvinnorörelsen står inför sina största framgångar. De sju männen är vänner, bekanta, främlingar. De träffas för att starta en mansklubb, vars syfte inte är uppenbar för någon av dem. Men i takt med att kvällen går infinner sig en stark och brinnande önskan att prata om sina känslor och sina liv. Kramer påstår att han legat med 600 kvinnor, Berliner och hans fru misshandlar varandra som förspel, Cavanaugh är för evigt fast i bilden av sig själv som framgångsrik ung basketspelare. Och Terry, han kan inte komma över Deborah Zeller.Mansklubben, som utkom i original i USA 1981, är en absurd skröna, en oavbrutet underhållande roman om män och manlighet."Kärleksberättelserna glider in i och över varandra, den litterärt bevandrade associerar säkert till Chaucer eller Boccaccio, och i dessa snabba, kvicka stycken visar Michaels prov på vad jag inte kan kalla annat än en av den realistiska traditionens mest glänsande föreningar av stil och människokännedom." Ur Victor Malms förord