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Martin continuedfrom previous page tradition with contemporary ideas, Apple's narrator must decide where his life did begin. In Eidus's work, readers discover that Elvis Presley is alive and well, living in the Bronx disguised as a Hasidic Jew. Elvis is discovered by Nancy, a young Jewish woman who fantasizes about a future life with AxI Rose. While Nancy is happy enough engaging herself in an affair with Elvis, she knows that one day AxI Rose will come to her in a broken state, like Elvis, and realize she is "the perfect woman, an experienced woman who can make kreplach and blintzes and noodle kugel ." One may see that this story humorously raises questions concerning the impact that popular culture has on one's cultural identity. Finally, Goldberg's very short "Gifts," in a more somber manner than Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969), brings to Contemporary light the desired and yet detested relationship between a Jewish child and mother. Beyond those works that follow traditions inherent in realistic literature, a number are more in line with the tradition of North American magical realism. Dara Horn's "Readers Digest" takes readers to Paradise, where individuals waiting to be born spend time in a dive bar drinking in religious texts only to eventually question whether or not having such knowledge of the world will disallow one to write his/her own story. Jon Papernick's "An Unwelcome Guest" leaves the American border and brings readers to the West Bank where Yossi Bar-Yosef, an American émigré to Israel, encounters an Arab "ghost" family in his own kitchen. During a nightlong conversation with these "ghosts," Papernick's character reawakens and opens for new discussion the fragile and questionable relationship between the Jewish and Arab world. Finally, in "Stone,"— Cynthia Ozick's never-beforecollected first publication—readers are introduced to a private art collector who purchases a stone statue ofMohammed for his daughter. The statue originally stood atop a New York City courthouse with statues of nine other lawmakers, but, when taken down for cleaning, Mohammed is not returned at the request of several Islamic governments. While the gift is an initial success and loved by its new owners, readers eventually come to learn of its magical and destructive powers. Of particular interest to readers may be the fact that, while this story was originally published in 1957, it has haunting connections to contemporary American life and the relationship between the Western and Middle Eastern world. When reviewing any anthology of short works, it is impossible to give enough space to every author. However, it can be safely said that the majority of those works found in this anthology fall into one Detailfrom cover of the two categories devised above. As a whole, while the collection pursues traditional issues and traditional literary styles, readers will discover that all of the works bring a fresh attitude and sense of adventure to this tradition. If this collection does nothing else, it will awaken contemporary readers to a new school of Jewish American writers who have a great deal to share. Michael J. Martin is an assistant professor ofEnglish at Stephen F. Austin State University, where he teaches courses in contemporary American literature , Holocaust literature, and Beat literature. Neither/Nor Fish/Fowl (NN/FF) Peter Bricklebank PP/FF: An Anthology Edited by Peter Conners Starcherone Books http://www.starcherone.com 240 pages; paper, $20.00 Imagine a saltwater marsh. Tide in, the place is mostly water, and a variety of creatures show themselves; tide out, now there's land, and a different feeding schedule of living wonders are on display. It's a borderland between land and water, sometimes more obviously one rather than another, but an outer edge of two elements. Think of it in terms of poetry and fiction. There's a surf where poets push the language toward the earthiness of prose, where the free swimming of metrics is abandoned for the muddy squelch of the sedimentally syntactical; or, for the landlubber prose folk, it's a place where atolls of silt and roots of trees spike through the water and a small adroit body is all you need. It's not...

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