I'm Going by the Public Library Tomorrow

About a year ago, a friend of mine suggested that I should correct a gap in my reading history and take a look at Leonard Michaels. It turned out that some of his short stories are available online, including two stories about a mathematician named Nachman, "Nachman" (Threepenny Review) and "Cryptology" (New Yorker). And if you take time to root around in Google caches, you can come up with two more Nachman tales from the New Yorker, "Of Mystery There Is No End" and "Nachman from Los Angeles." (Will they ever be collected into one book? Time will tell!)

Now, Shalom Auslander lends his enthusiasm to the cause, telling Nextbook readers about how he first read Michaels on an Orthodox shuttle bus to New Jersey. "It is not a happy book," he says of I Would Have Saved Them If I Could, but then, "I was not a happy teen." And after reading those short stories again recently, "I felt like I'd just spent a month of Sabbaths locked in a suburban split-level ranch with my parents and siblings." Sign me up for some of that! (Because I can deal with family traumas in just about any ethnic variety as long as it's not Irish Catholics, you know.)

The article also features a podcast in which Auslander talks to Laurel Snyder about Michaels and reads the story "Murderers." Worth a listen if you've got some minutes to spare, or headphones in your cubicle...