I would have saved them if I could

I wanted to like these stories more than I in fact did. I knew of Leonard Michaels as esteemed if not prolific short- story writer.This was my chance to get to know his work. This book is his second collection after the perhaps more well- known 'Going Places'. Michaels is a writer of the quick punch and the fast word. His writing is clipped, and sharp. He often throws in intellectual references and ideas from what is clearly a wide reading. The stories arouse initial interest but do not follow through as narratives, but rather take the form of cut- up comments, digressions, sequenced reflection. They also do not go deep emotionally. The feelings here are quick hungers and lusts, sharp angers and violent misperceptions. Michaels has a real talent for compressed utterance, poetic epigram. So the best part of the title - story is I think, the title itself. It truly aroused my curiosity but after reading the story I still was not sure what it was about. "When you are hungry and poor you grab at what you can get" This line summarizes what I take to be the spirit of Michaels' work. I can be wrong. And I may not get it. I also know Michaels had a good knowledge of Yiddish, had a sense of the Lower East Side world, also of the Shoah. A Jewish writer in a way though it is difficult to see any special message in that regard coming from this work. When alienation was the fashion he was alienated. And yet still not fashionable.

Leonard Michaels has, in the last six months, become one of my literary heroes. "I Would Have Saved Them If I Could" features his talent at writing extremely short stories as well as more fleshed out pieces. It's a shame this book is out of print, try finding it at your local libraries. "Murderers" is perhaps one of the best short stories by an American writer I have ever read. Do yourself a favor, read this book.