Nathan Englander’s New Collection

Camp Stories

Illustration by Blexbolex

By STACY SCHIFF - New York Times - Published: February 16, 2012

A man walks into a peep show. He has an excellent reason: he has just scuffed his shoe, which was costly, on the sidewalk. A flight of stairs and $5 later he is in a booth, facing a circular stage. The partition lifts. Before him sit four nearly naked women. The first is sheer perfection, the creature of his dreams. He barely has time to come to terms with his torrent of desire — “a feeling so pure that he wants to cry” — when his time is up. Briefly he ponders his situation. In a few rush-hour minutes he has transformed himself from the loyal suburban husband of a pregnant wife to a man befouled by lust on 42nd Street. He inserts a second token. The partition lifts. Before him sit the rabbis of his youth. Their leader is fat, naked and demanding. What precisely does Allen Fein — born Ari Feinberg, hotshot lawyer in his $500 wingtips — think he’s doing? Before he can properly answer, an inner chamber opens to reveal Fein’s therapist.

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK - Stories

By Nathan Englander - 207 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.95.

Nathan Englander - photo - Juliana Sohn

At what point does it become clear that we’re in a Nathan Englander story rather than a Woody Allen movie? Surely not when the next token reveals Fein’s half-clad wife and his (“Why ruin a good marriage, even if it’s to her?”) mother. Possibly when Fein stubbornly reasons with his jury: “You want truth and justice and for everything to fit in its place. But some things are in between, Rabbi.” Certainly when this haunted peep show ends on a note of startling grace.

Englander burst on the scene in 1999 with “For the Relief of Unbearable Urges,” another collection poised at the trapdoor between spiritual thirst and physical hunger. (The title refers to a visit to a prostitute, prescribed by a Jerusalem rabbi for a long-suffering congregant.) My favorite was the indelible tale of the Protestant financial analyst on whom Orthodox Judaism abruptly descends from the clear blue sky. He will wind up in his chintz-filled Park Avenue apartment with a mystified wife, his longtime shrink and a rabbi plucked from the Yellow Pages; in a way, his story is a bookend to “Peep Show.”   

Full review at The New York Times.