L ifestyles /C ulture
Review: Nicole Krauss’ New Story Collection
B OOKS
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
“To Be a Man: Stories”
Nicole Krauss
Harper IN NINE OF the 10 stories that
make up Nicole Krauss’ first
collection of short stories, “To
Be a Man,” the protagonist or
another prominently featured
character has an advanced
degree of some kind.

In the only story that doesn’t
settle this question one way or
the other, “Amour,” the narra-
tor’s love interest yearns for life
with her old boyfriend, Ezra,
who would take her to the Film
Forum to see Pasolini and
Fellini movies. The existence of
a Ph.D. is not directly addressed
in that story but the characters
in these stories, published in
the last 18 years, live in a blur
of endowed chairs and second
homes, and own their apart-
ments in New York, Tel Aviv or
both. They take solo vacations
to Kyoto and have opinions on
opera and work for architects.

There’s nothing wrong with
writing about a small milieu; the
function of fiction, after all, is
to suggest universality through
interrogation of the partic-
ular, whether that particular is
middle- to upper-class or more
down-to-earth, as in Roth’s
Weequahic or Ferrante’s Naples.

But what hinders Krauss’
stories is that her characters
are often residents of the same
emotional neighborhood.

Slowly encroaching
calamity, represented with fire
(plus doomed relationships)
in “End Days” and with an
unexplained toxic event (plus
a doomed relationship) in
“Future Emergencies” is met
in both cases with characters
who, despite frantic internal
conflict, do nothing.

The narrators of “In the
Garden,” “Switzerland” and
“Amour” begin their stories
with variants of, “Let me
tell you about a thing that
happened to me decades ago
that I was recently reminded
of, and that still looms large in
my self-conception.”
Everyone who is Jewish
wears it awkwardly, like trying
to shrug on a tallit that won’t
quite stay on the shoulders.

To read these stories can
sometimes feel like watching
a one-woman show — the
characters are numerous, but
you can see it’s the same person.

The stories that more
directly concern the title
premise are more successful.

Fathers or father-figures
loom large in the lives of their
daughters in “Zusya on the
Roof,” “I Am Asleep but My
Heart Is Awake,” “End Days,”
“To Be a Man” and “Seeing
is most thoughtfully considered.

In “To Be a Man,” what the
fathers or father-figures did
to socialize themselves into
daughter-raisers is a mystery
to those daughters, who are
usually mistreated by their
romantic partners. How does
a man doing this to me become
a man who loves his daughters?
The women learn that men are
capable both of great violence
and tenderness, and that the
two impulses live within them
always. The men in the life of
the narrator — the German
boxer lover, who is “pure wolf”
in bed; her IDF enlistee brother,
who is taught to numb himself
to his pain and that of others;
a male friend, who recalls his
adolescent violence — all stood
where her teenage son stands
now, “out on a bank between
the shore and a sea that goes on
and on.” All the narrator can
hope for is that he’ll keep an
eye on the shore as the waters
continue to rise.

Krauss’ writing is phenom-
enal, and to read her stories,
even those that don’t quite
Courtesy of Harper
succeed, is to treat yourself to
bite after bite of an exceedingly
Ershadi.” In these stories, as well rich cake. I’ll look forward to
as “Switzerland,” the complex her next novel. l
mix of loneliness, fear, sex,
violence, weakness and submis- jbernstein@jewishexponent.com;
sion that some writers call “love” 215-832-0740
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24 DECEMBER 10, 2020
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