The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman

Nutty and presumptive daydreams about celebrities or girlfriends are the starting point for the best of these stories. Among these, my favorite is "Let's Hear It for a Beautiful Guy", where Bruce's narrator explores the difficulties he would encounter if he harbored and cosseted Sammy Davis Jr., who a syndicated gossip columnist says needs a complete rest. This hilarious story, a practical but crazed soliloquy, explores how Sammy's big and generous personality would cope in the narrator's ordinary world, while sharing his studio apartment. (Sammy gets to sleep in the loft. But the narrator's brother-in-law, a big fan, might be trouble.) With such stories, BJF is a wonder, as he creates voices that are persuasive, logical, and bonkers. These stories are as good as the best stuff in "Fierce Pajamas", the great anthology of humor writing from The New Yorker. Nonetheless, Bruce can be sentimental.

Long ago and far away (when I wore a younger man's thong) I partook of fine quality entertainment of the likes of Terry Southern's stuff & Sid Perelman's feuilletons & the Evelyn Waughwerks. And then I discovered my spiritual doppelganger. Bruce. He touched me---and suddenly---nothing was the same.Look. I'm not gonna mince words. This is the single greatest short-story collection in the history of the universe. Although then again, I'm not gonna overpraise Bruce's later stories and say that they're as fab as the early stories. But let me thrustfully insist on the weird idiosyncratic brilliance of those early stories. This book is arguably better than beer, possibly better than sex, and definitely better than sex with Bruce Jay Friedman.Unfortunately, one of those early stories is missing from this collection. Presumably due to sheer carelessness, a story called THE BIG SIX was omitted. My fave story is WHEN YOU'RE EXCUSED. Or possibly THE SUBVERSIVE. About the narrator's wholesome midwestern friend who turns out to be a full-tilt wackaloon. My other favorite is 23 PAT O'BRIEN MOVIES. A satire of suicide-prevention cliches which could've been easily transposed into a 2-character stage-skit. (And what a missed opportunity for Brando & Olivier.)

Friedman is a treasure of a writer, chronicling the post WWII generation, specifically in the 60's and 70's. Quite a few of his stories became movies. A truely inspired collection.

Really nice touch with words, always funny at his own expense and someone who has grown old as an author without turning into an old fud. Most of these stories were written for magazines over the years and it's really neat to watch the voice change and expand. I wish he would take his Promethean self-indulgent alter ego of the '70s, Harry Towns, represented here with several stories, and write a full-length treatment on that character in the '90s. Friedman is a class act--too bad more people don't pick up on him. At least he made some dough writing for Hollywood--hope he still has some left