A GIRL WITH A MONKEY
THE MEN'S CLUB
SYLVIA
TO FEEL THESE THINGS
A GIRL
WITH A MONKEY
Short fiction
5˝ x 8˝, 256 pp
Paper, $14.95
1-56279-120-6
World
New and Selected Stories
FINALIST, 2000 BAY AREA
BOOK REVIEWERS FICTION AWARD
“Brilliant ... Anyone concerned with the American short story
should read and know these stories.... Other American writers have tried to write stories like these, but Leonard Michaels got there first and has done it better than almost anyone else.”
“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 through 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. Michaels’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.” This publication
was made possible thanks to a generous grant by the National Endowment
for the Arts.
— Charles Baxter, San Francisco Chronicle
—Brad Hooper, Booklist
THE
MEN'S CLUB OUT
OF PRINT
Fiction 208 pages, 5˝ x 8˝
Paper, $10.00
1-56279-039-0
US & Canada
AVAILABLE
FROM FSG
A paperback reissue with a new fictional prologue, the timely and prescient novel that anticipated by a decade the men’s movement of today.
“Brilliant and resonant ... A story that every man could tell if he dared to, but only a writer as gifted as Leonard Michaels could shape.” “Short, funny, and discomforting.... Love stories based on lost
connections, incompatible longings, and lacerating fights.... Anger rather
than tenderness seems to be the chief means of communication between the
sexes.... The climax is fitting, horrific, and wonderfully droll.”
—Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
—New York Times Book Review
SYLVIA
OUT
OF PRINT
Fictional Memoir
5˝ x 8˝, 144 pp
b & w illustrations
Paper, $10.00
1-56279-029-3
US & Canada
AVAILABLE FROM FSG
A 1992 NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Notable Book of the Year”
“It would have been easy to leave Sylvia. Had it been difficult, I might have done it.”
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. Their life together, in many respects a nightmare, also reflects the spiritual qualities of an era and of a city at a time when figures such as Malcolm X, Lenny Bruce, and John F. Kennedy came into prominence—an era of flamboyant personalities, social upheaval, assassination, and suicide.
Sylvia first appeared as a story-length memoir based on Michael's own marriage during the cultural revolution of the sixties. Now Michaels gives us, in novelistic form, more about the “weird delirium” of the sixties as well as the excruciating particulars of a modern marriage.
“Leonard Michaels's tersely lyrical prose is as beautifully honed as that of any contemporary novelist who comes to mind.” “One of the strongest and most arresting prose talents of his generation.”
— Francine du Plessix Gray
—Larry McMurtry
TO FEEL
THESE THINGS OUT
OF PRINT
Essays
5˝ x 8˝, 160 pp
Paper, $12.00
1-56279-040-4
US & Canada
CONTACT MERCURY HOUSE
In this, his first collection of nonfiction narratives, Michaels moves between plain fact and dramas of the imagination to offer supremely elegant essays, mostly personal in tone and content. From evocative reeminiscences of his immigrant parents, to an iconoclastic disquisition on the word “relationship, ” to an analysis of literary talk (“It's like talking about yourself but literary talk is logical and polite, a social activity of nice people”), to an appreciation of the complexities of professional basketball, these pieces present fresh and stimulating insights into the changing psychosexual theater of contemporary life.
“To Feel These Things is exemplary.... His style is evocative, gloriously relaxed, yet laden with precise details.”
“Leonard Michaels is a great magician of prose.” “He can compact a lifetime down to mere sentences.”
—New York Times Book Review
— New York Newsday
— Washington Post Book World
