Photograph by Michael Lionstar
“Nobody’s worried about whether you can watch Star Wars without having been a Jedi,” Nathan Englander told Heeb last year, addressing this tendency for “literature with lots of Jews in it, or with lots of black people, or with lots of gay people” to be viewed as niche literature, to get shelved in sections with hyphenated signs. Though the characters in his newest story collection include West Bank settlers (“Sister Hills”), yeshiva students (“How We Avenged the Blums”), and naked rabbis (“Peep Show”), the impulses charging through the characters’ hearts—fear, shame, endearment, wonder, skepticism, drunkenness—are universal. (Yes, even Protestants feel these things. Jedis, too.)
Englander says he writes out of the culture he knows, but strives to build whole worlds. And it is true that each of the eight stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank is vast and deep, populated with characters of all ages (from skinny kids to bridge-playing Methuselahs), all temperaments (grieving mothers, wired camp counselors), and even different species (lizards, turtles). This wholeness of vision, along with Englander’s humor, deep feeling, and algebraically precise sentences, is the reason why the back of WWTAWWTAAF’s pink- and orange-lettered jacket is littered with glowing blurbs from writers like Jonathan Franzen, Téa Obreht, and Dave Eggers. It’s also why the book was named a New York Times Notable Book and won the 2012 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. And you, dear reader, can hear the author read these stories out loud on March 6—the day after the book is released in paperback.
Meet the Author: Nathan Englander at the St. Louis County Library Headquarters, 1640 S. Lindbergh, March 6, 7 p.m. Free. For more information, call 314-994-3300 or go to slcl.org.
