A director needs to make a film, but has no money. For want of an idea, the producer consults the Lexis-Nexis database, which produces Zwilling, who is the offspring of Holocaust survivors. Overtures are made, office space rented, cases of wine bought, dim sum ordered, checks cut. One character, Baruch Steyne, a polygamous musician, is worth his own novel. Inexplicably, the backing vanishes and the film deal falls through.
Writers reveal themselves profoundly in the ways they choose to end novels.
Sometimes we are left mostly with the naked image of a writer in his holy nimbus of incandescent loneliness, peddling his alienation. It s metaphysical bluffing, strip poker played with tarot cards. We see what covers writers, what crosses them, what their hopes and their fears are. Ross Feld ends his novel superbly clothed, a seasoned player who holds his tarot cards close to his heart, too wise to traffic in fates. He seems to have quietly recused himself from any totalitarian motel-room dream.