Another beguiling dispatch from the Pinch - Memphis's Jewish ghetto
- in the form of an intricate generational tale preceded by two
curtain-raisers. The first story, "Zelig Rifkin and the Tree of
Dreams," proceeds exactly as advertised: famed local coward Zelig
Rifkin, tormented by the Pinch Gang and forced to climb a humongous
tree to retrieve their lost kite, finds that from the height of the
tree's branches he can see what everyone in town is dreaming, enter
their dreams if he chooses, and puff himself for a few precious
weeks into the mensch he's never been. "Hyman the Magnificent"
presents a dry-goods escapist artist who, unwisely convinced that
he's Houdini's spiritual son, fails at ever more dangerous stunts
until the predictably paranormal climax. But Stern (Harry Kaplan's
Adventures Underground, 1991, etc.) saves his boldest magic for his
biggest story, "Annals of the Kabakoffs," in which a series of
flashbacks reveal how family black-sheep Itchy Kabakoff - carnival
hustler, author of a thousand seams, and agent of his father
Moses's suicide - has all along been recapitulating the life of his
grandfather Yankel, kidnapped from his native village and sold into
the Tsar's army - until even Itchy himself realizes that his
dreamlike liaison with his Tante Laylah, an authentic descendant of
Lilith rescued from the family fate of disappearing by a timely
application of printer's ink by Mose, binds him tighter to his
family in more ways than one. So maybe the gears of the fantastic
groan from time to time, but Stern never loses his command of the
Hasidic storyteller's gift: he makes you feel that the entire
universe is balanced on the Jewish neighborhood of Memphis,
Tennessee. (Kirkus Reviews)
"An astonishing writer ... who has secured himself a seat in the
distinguished history of Jewish-American letters". -- The
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steve Stern returns with lyrically comic tales about the Pinch,
a backwater Jewish community in Memphis, whose misbegotten citizens
refer to themselves as "the lost tribe". Stern's dreamers are
plagued by history, lust, solitude, and the extravagance of their
own fevered imaginations.
Stern is a consummate spinner of tales, a mythmaker. A Plague of
Dreamers evokes the American Jewish experience, weaving a tapestry
of tradition and assimilation and, ultimately, of
transformation.
General
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