The Moon & Ruben Shein; A Novel

Little Rock, AR: August House Publishers, 1984. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. Ira Hocut (Artwork). 197, [3] pages. Signed with sentiment on half-title, reads To my fans all over the neighborhood--Best [Signed in Hebrew with (evetS) adjacent. DJ has wear and is in a plastic sleeve. Steve J. Stern (born 1947) is an author from Memphis. Much of his work draws inspiration from Yiddish folklore. Stern studied 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. He published his first book, the story collection Isaac and the Undertaker's Daughter, which was based in London's 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..." 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 in 1999, and his novel The Angel of Forgetfulness was named one of the best books of 2005 by The Washington Post. Stern has won some notable scholarly awards, including a Fulbright fellowships and the Guggenheim foundations Fellowship. Stern's first novel titled The Moon and Ruben Shein chronicled the misadventures of its title character, the book turns on Ruben's learning that his longtime literary mentor, Benjamin Wolf, has committed suicide and bequeathed Ruben his widow, Lydia. The protagonist leaves his home in Wales and travels to Wolf's residence in Arkansas, where he lives with both Lydia and Wolf's mistress, Phoebe. Attempting to write a biography of Wolf, Ruben is ultimately distracted by tangential travel and bizarre personal relationships. Although some critics found The Moon and Ruben Shein was praised as a humorous and promising novel debut. Derived from a Kirkus review: Ruben Shein, a writer and self-entitled "Jew d'esprit," is knocking around Wales doing not much--when word reaches him from Arkansas that his mentor Benjamin Wolf, poet of the grand old egomaniacal school, has died. And Wolf's mistress, small-press publisher Phoebe Jones, beckons Ruben back to accept Wolf's unusual bequest to him: painter-wife Lydia, whom Wolf had abandoned for Phoebe. Ruben, with nothing better to do, returns; maybe he'll do Wolf's biography while he's at it. But the inherited Lydia turns out to be in less than tip-top emotional shape, immediately pulling Ruben from Excelsior, Arkansas, to New Orleans to do her bidding. New Orleans turns out to be a year-long Mardi Gras, replete with live-in clowns (two destitute fellow-writers, Cloff and Devereux) and circuses (Lydia's art-gallery and studio society).