The Men's Club - (FSG Classics) by Leonard Michaels (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

First published in 1981, Leonard Michaels's The Men's Club is a scathing, pitying, absurdly dark and funny novel about manhood in the age of therapy. "The climax is fitting, horrific, and wonderfully droll" (The New York Times Book Review).

Seven men, friends and strangers, gather in a house in Berkeley. They intend to start a men's club, the purpose of which isn't immediately clear to any of them; but very quickly they discover a powerful and passionate desire to talk.

Review Quotes

"Chekhov and Kafka, after consulting Chaucer, might have collaborated on The Men's Club. It is excellent." --John Leonard, The New York Times

"Leonard Michaels's stories stand alongside those of his best Jewish contemporaries--Grace Paley and Philip Roth. Like theirs, Michaels's vernacular achieves the level of song." --Mona Simpson, The New York Times

"Leonard Michaels was an original; everything he wrote, like it or not, came alive. His prose moved at a fast clip and paid readers the compliment of assuming they could match his mental velocity, with a concise, pungent and pyrotechnic style that tolerated no flab." --Philip Lopate, The Nation

About the Author

Leonard Michaels (1933-2003) was the author of five collections of stories and essays--Going Places, I Would Have Saved Them If I Could, Shuffle, A Girl with a Monkey, and To Feel These Things--as well as two novels, Sylvia and The Men's Club. All of his fiction will be reissued as FSG Classics.