The Peace Process by Bruce Jay Friedman

The Peace Process by Bruce Jay Friedman

A brilliant new collection from one of American literature's most original and hilarious purveyors of dark comedy

Silenced by the horrors of Nazi Germany, a Jewish satirist is inspired to write again by his biggest fan: Joseph Goebbels. A retired English teacher dies on the operating table and wakes up to an afterlife in which literature does not exist; he can claim any masterpiece as his own, from The Catcher in the Rye to Crime and Punishment--if only he can remember what actually happens in those stories. On his first trip to the Holy Land, a down-on-his-luck filmmaker reluctantly agrees to help a young Israeli Arab escape to New York, only to watch in dismay as the upstart lands a buxom, Yiddish-speaking girlfriend and a monster movie deal.

Mario Puzo once said that the world of Bruce Jay Friedman's short fiction is like a Twilight Zone with Charlie Chaplin. Ironic, clever, perceptive, and hysterical, The Peace Process is vintage Friedman--fourteen finely crafted tales that take dead aim at the sweet spot between pleasure and pain.

“The master of the deadpan is on top of his game at 85 with a wise, funny new collection” —Tablet magazine

“Larry David has nothing on Friedman in finding the absurd in ordinary situations. . . . Jewish humor lives in this frequently hilarious and thoughtful collection.” —Kirkus Reviews

“[The Peace Process] is vintage Friedman: anarchic and obsessive, funny and sad in equal measure and often in the same story.” —Jewish Book Council

“This collection of Friedman’s madcap stories is replete with tricky plots, wacky traps, and characters who ensnare themselves in their own ridiculous choices. . . . Funny, sometimes brutally so. . . . Life affirming.” —Publishers Weekly

“A master of his craft, Friedman takes aim at the foibles and frailties of the human male with penetrating wit to reveal the absurdity at the heart of life.” —Foreword Reviews
 
“Two things I know about books: 1. ) The ones that are longer than 200 pages are generally not any good. 2.) This new one by Bruce Jay Friedman is delightful.” —Michael Cera
 
“Bruce Jay Friedman’s new collection of stories and novella, The Peace Process, is a great deal of fun.” —The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Virginia)

Praise for Bruce Jay Friedman
“Bruce Jay Friedman has earned a permanent place on the shelf of contemporary American letters.” —Los Angeles Times
 
“Friedman writes with a wild-eyed wit, a hard-but-gentle touch, and a disturbing grasp of the fundamentals of society.” —San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Bruce Jay Friedman’s razor-sharp wit and keen observation of the genus American male (1950s to the present) have the power to make men laugh and women weep.” —The Boston Globe
 
“A great comic actor, if he or she sticks around long enough, might win not an actual Oscar but a consolation prize: a lifetime achievement award. The National Book Awards need something similar for America’s comic writers. Among the first I’d nominate is Bruce Jay Friedman, whose prose, over the past five decades, has mostly been a pure pleasure machine.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
 
“Bruce Jay Friedman is an American original whose least engaged considerations can beat the crap out of almost anything else on this block.” —Gordon Lish
 
“What makes Friedman more interesting than most of Malamud, Roth, and Bellow is the sense he affords of possibilities larger than the doings and undoings of the Jewish urban bourgeois. . . . What makes him more important is that he writes out of the viscera instead of the cerebrum.” —Nelson Algren, The Nation
 
“The language is so strong, the laughter so wild. . . . If you believe in reading, then when a book comes along by Friedman, you have to read it. It’s as simple as that.” —The Washington Post Book World
 
“Mr. Friedman has been likened to everyone from J. D. Salinger to Woody Allen. [The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman] should finally establish him for what he is: Bruce Jay Friedman, sui generis and no mean thing. No further comparisons necessary.” —The New York Times Book Review
 
“Friedman explores themes such as loneliness, aging, fear, parenthood and ethnicity, spinning tales in an expertly modulated voice that lies somewhere equidistant from those of Wilde, Salinger, and Woody Allen.” —Publishers Weekly

Friedman, Bruce Jay: - Bruce Jay Friedman (1930-2020) was a novelist, screenwriter, and playwright. He was described as a savage social satirist by the New York Times. In 1965 he edited a volume of short stories which he titled Black Humor, establishing an American literary genre for himself and writers such as J. P. Donleavy, Edward Albee, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, and John Barth. He was the author of eight novels (including The Dick, Stern, and A Mother's Kisses), four collections of short stories, a number of plays--among them Scuba Duba and Steambath--and screenplays for the movies Splash and Stir Crazy.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781504011730
ISBN 10	1504011732
Title	The Peace Process
Author	Bruce Jay Friedman
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Open Road Media
Year published	2015-11-26
Number of pages	252
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.