The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff: And Other Stories by Joseph Epstein (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24, 9780618721955/0618721959, June 14, 2010)
There are short story writers who dazzle with their virtuosity and others who impress with their willingness to engage intensely, almost obsessively, with a circumscribed world. Joseph Epstein, best known for his formidable talents as an essayist, clearly falls in the latter camp, and he displays his mastery in this collection of 14 wry, wise, often moving short stories exploring slices of Chicago life.
The protagonists of Epstein's stories share a Jewish heritage, but any attachment to their religion is vestigial at best, like a lifelong preference for the White Sox or the Cubs. Most are middle-aged or older, middling academics, professionals or successful self-made businessmen. To a greater or lesser degree they've made peace with their lot and in so doing have achieved some measure of self-knowledge, even a glimmer of wisdom, along the way. It's that level of insight that enables the protagonist of the title story, a family physician who's lost his wife to ALS, to forgo the excitement of life with a wealthy Los Angeles widow for the modest pleasures of his Chicago existence. Or it's what causes the retired professor of "The Philosopher and the Checkout Girl," to experience a "late life crisis," when "a person realizes his regrets greatly outweigh his achievements and there isn't enough time to do much about it."
Epstein's qualities as a revealer of character and storyteller reach their peak in the quartet of tales that concludes the collection. "Beyond the Pale," one of only two not set in Chicago, portrays a young writer seized by an improbable zeal to bring the words of an undeservedly obscure Yiddish writer to an English-speaking audience. In "My Brother Eli," Lou Black, the hardheaded, prosperous owner of a used auto parts business observes with mounting dismay the antics of his Norman Maileresque novelist brother. Another comfortable entrepreneur (plumbing supplies this time) improbably forsakes nearly 40 years of fidelity for a brief sexual encounter with one of his employees in "Bartlestein's First Fling," and contemplates what seem to be the cosmic implications of that choice; and in "Kuperman Awaits Ecstasy," an elderly man's discovery of a love of classical music helps bring peace to a dying woman.
Whether it's Senn High School (an alma mater he shares with a host of literary and entertainment celebrities), the West Rogers Park neighborhood or the Ashkenaz Deli, Epstein is unafraid to recycle the settings of his stories. That he does so in a way that provides a pleasant feeling of recognition rather than the tedium of excessive familiarity is something that makes them even more fresh and resonant. It's easy to picture Saul Bellow or Bernard Malamud, even Isaac Bashevis Singer, cracking an admiring smile in appreciation of Epstein's craft. --Harvey Freedenberg
Shelf Talker: Joseph Epstein's third collection of stories offers consistent pleasure in its exploration of the lives of his fellow Chicagoans.
