By
– August 25, 2011
Clean, elegant, alert, Leonard Michaels brings his keenly crafted style to an eclectic array of topics in The Essays of Leonard Michaels, a selection compiled by his widow after his death in 2003.
Michaels, a short story writer, novelist, and professor at Berkeley, writes with rare sensitivity and care as he travels over his varied territory. He probes the changing meaning of the word “relationship” — a neutered “romance,” “affair,” “lover”? — and the changing meaning of “sentence.” He puzzles over tourists’ obsession with photographing Michelangelo’s Moses and his own almost compulsive fascination with Rita Hayworth. He creates a lively story for the usherette in Edward Hopper’s New York Movie. He writes with sweet but unsentimental affection for his parents and his early years on the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village, sprinkling a Yiddish word here and there as if to remind himself and his readers where he came from.
These are occasional pieces, best read selectively. Sometimes playful, occasionally philosophical, wide-ranging, and personal, they are tied together by Michaels’ quest for the meaning beneath the surface and the great care with which he constructs his work.
Michaels, a short story writer, novelist, and professor at Berkeley, writes with rare sensitivity and care as he travels over his varied territory. He probes the changing meaning of the word “relationship” — a neutered “romance,” “affair,” “lover”? — and the changing meaning of “sentence.” He puzzles over tourists’ obsession with photographing Michelangelo’s Moses and his own almost compulsive fascination with Rita Hayworth. He creates a lively story for the usherette in Edward Hopper’s New York Movie. He writes with sweet but unsentimental affection for his parents and his early years on the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village, sprinkling a Yiddish word here and there as if to remind himself and his readers where he came from.
These are occasional pieces, best read selectively. Sometimes playful, occasionally philosophical, wide-ranging, and personal, they are tied together by Michaels’ quest for the meaning beneath the surface and the great care with which he constructs his work.
Maron L. Waxman, retired editorial director, special projects, at the American Museum of Natural History, was also an editorial director at HarperCollins and Book-of-the-Month Club.
