Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven: Stories

Library of Modern Jewish Literature

by Steve Stern

A collection of tales set in Pinch, a Jewish community perched on a river bluff above Memphis. Here, wonderful and strange things happen: the angel of death visits in a blue serge suit; the voice of God commands Morton Gruber to collaborate on a book; and an aunt goes on a celestial blind date.

Genres: Jewish

260 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Stern was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1947, the son of a grocer. He left Memphis in the 1960s to attend college, then to travel the US and Europe — living, as he told one interviewer, "the wayward life of my generation for about a decade," and ending on a hippie commune in the Ozarks. He went on to study writing in the graduate program at the University of Arkansas, at a time when it included several notable writers who've since become prominent, including poet C.D. Wright and fiction writers Ellen Gilchrist, Lewis Nordan, Lee K. Abbott and Jack Butler.

Stern subsequently moved to London, England, before returning to Memphis in his thirties to accept a job at a local folklore center. There he learned about the city's old Jewish ghetto, The Pinch, and began to steep himself in Yiddish folklore. He published his first book, the story collection Isaac and the Undertaker's Daughter, which was based in The Pinch, in 1983. It won the Pushcart Writers' Choice Award and acclaim from some notable critics, including Susan Sontag, who praised the book's "brio ... whiplash sentences ... energy and charm," and observed that "Steve Stern may be a late practitioner of the genre [Yiddish folklore], but he is an expert one."

By decade's end Stern had won the O. Henry Award, two Pushcart Prize awards, published more collections, including Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven (which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American Fiction) and the novel Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground, and was being hailed by critics such as Cynthia Ozick as the successor to Isaac Bashevis Singer. Stern's 2000 collection The Wedding Jester won the National Jewish Book Award, and his novel The Angel of Forgetfulness was named one of the best books of 2005 by The Washington Post.

Stern, who teaches at Skidmore College, has also won some notable scholarly awards, including fellowships from the Fulbright and the Guggenheim foundations. He currently lives in Ballston Spa, New York, and his latest work, the novel The Frozen Rabbi, was published in 2010.

Reviews

[GONZA · Rating 2 out of 5]

While lacking the lyricism of Singer, these Stern stories brought me overwhelmingly back to American Jewish communities, where Yiddish is the dominant idiom and everything is relatively infused with the humor I associate with it.

Pur senza la liricità di Singer, questi racconti di Stern mi hanno riportato prepotentemente alle comunità ebraiche americane, dove l'yddish é l'idioma dominante e tutto é relativamente infuso di quell'umorismo che gli associo.

[Lucile Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

9. Lazer Malkin Enters Heaven by Steve Stern
This collection of stories should be read over a long period of time or they will, in my grandma’s words, become “much of a muchness.” There are angels, dybbyks, and other strange beings, including a sex-starved ghost who tries to act as a muse for an ageing writer on retreat. An old man refuses to die, no matter what, and fights with the angel of death. There is a lot of laughter in this book, but there is an underlying sadness in all the mysticism. The author seems to be mourning a time that is past and only lets the present in reluctantly. He does, however, get the past and its details completely right. He is not afraid to show the dust and grit of a Southern city (Memphis) Jewish community. His teenage boys are malicious but clever, and some even have a good-hearted streak. His adults not so much.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much better than his first collection (which itself was very good). Stern continues to explore outsider-ness and detachment, putting a much greater emphasis on connecting with one's roots (often in the form of the Pinch) and using writing to overcome alienation. As with "Isaac and the Undertaker's Daughter," the final story (the most memorable and poignant of the book) brings all these themes together, using Stern himself as an object lesson in navigating the cold uninspiring reality of the contemporary world.

[Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steve Stern finely crafted these haunting, macabre and fascinating stories set in a fallen and forgotten world where even the angels lose their sheen. Still, for all the faults of his gods and angels, there is a definite beauty and uncertain redemption in his writing. Lovely.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Steve Stern. Thought provoking, interesting, and sometimes funny stories.

[Carol Storm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adorable magic realism -- Woody Allen meets H.P. Lovecraft!