“Quite possibly the most
underappreciated American writer of the second half of the 20th
century.”
Thus proclaimed the subject line of
the Fictionaut
forum discussion last month that introduced me to the late Leonard
Michaels. Embarrassed to admit I'd not heard of him, and admiring
Chris Okum, the writer who opened the subject, I downloaded
Michaels's Collected Essays. I read them almost as fast as I read
crime novels.
This surprised me. Michaels was a brilliant man. His
essays challenged my mind in a way that ordinarily requires
deliberation at the plodding tempo of a dirge. What made the
difference, what kept me clipping along through the subtleties of his
thinking, enabling me to absorb intuitively the more difficult
abstractions, was, simply, his storytelling genius.
And maybe coming up with the right
title is part of that genius. The lead-off essay in this collection,
for example, the title of which won my devotion at first glance, is
What's a Story?
His essays are not long. They're not argumentative, dry, tightassed
theses aimed at academic review. Humor leavens them. They entice in a
voice that reaches with simplicity. They seduce with analysis dressed
in narrative.
