Table of Contents
Praise for Scott Nadelson
The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress
A poignant meditation on love, literature, and the pains as well as the perverse pleasures of loneliness. Nadelson chronicles his life in progress with the wry, warm honesty of an old friend catching up after many years. He reminds us that the world can be simultaneously huge and miniscule, that what we read and see and remember is at once nothing and everything, that wholeness is much greater than any sum total you can imagine.
MEGHAN DAUM, author of Life Would Be Perfect
If I Lived In That House
The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress is an endearing self-portrait filled with wisdom, humor, and refreshing honesty. Nadelson examines moments in his life marked by failure and disappointment, yet nothing fails or disappoints in this fine modern memoir. A great read.
DINTY W. MOORE, author of Between Panic & Desire
In The Next Scott Nadelson, the title figure is honest, open, and searching, and his presence on the page is truly consoling: his patient excavation of his life will help readers understand their own.
DAVID SHIELDS, author of Realty Hunger: A Manifesto
Aftermath
Aftermath is a sophisticated, emotionally complicated collection with an exhilarating undercurrent of danger.
MARGOT LIVESEY, author of The House on Fortune Street
Seamlessly Nadelson opens a window to the workings of the human heart.
NORTHWEST BOOK LOVERS
I emerged from the book, as if from a movie, so lost in and convinced by the vivid screen, that the world felt a little sun-bleached in comparison.
DEBRA SPARK, author of Good for the Jews
A novel could bring him the attention he deserves, though an artful, accomplished writer like Nadelson ought to be able to sustain a respectable career on stories alone. Ms. Treisman and others often forget that many writers writers are finally pulled from the edges of obscurity. The career of Andre Dubus who wrote long stories and novellas, published with a small but respectable outfit, and crafted two exquisite books of personal nonfiction might be a guiding example for Scott Nadelson. Perhaps The New Yorker should pay attention to him. Perhaps you should.
THE COLLAGIST
Nadelson is master of the anticlimax. Aftermath is an often-despairing testament to the elusiveness of closure, the infinite and insurmountable distance between even intimate lovers, but also to the human capacity for growth.
PORTLAND MONTHLY
Nadelson creates characters so endearingly flawed that regardless of our actual similarities, we relate to each of them. Each page documents our own fears, insecurities, and heartbreaks. Each sentence becomes the moment we first remember hope failing. Perhaps Nadelsons greatest accomplishment, however, is that the collection as a whole is uplifting [the] realization that losses are universal is comforting.
PLOUGHSHARES LITERARY MAGAZINE
Nadelson is interested in the grey area between major life events, the fumbling and wrong turns, the ambiguities of heart and purpose that have become the hallmarks of young adulthood. His stories strike just the right balance between funny and sad, between the high shtick of aging Jewish parents and the raw emotion of young people experiencing their first major personal disasters.
EUGENE MAGAZINE
The former Oregon Book Award winners prose is elegant in its unpretentiousness. The depth of his insight is stunning. The breadth and detail of his knowledge of the ordinary lives of men and women in widely varying walks of life is astonishing.
JEWISH REVIEW
The Cantors Daughter
My first choice [Samuel Goldberg & Sons Fiction Prize for Emerging Jewish Writers] is The Cantors Daughter, which I found moving and original without being clearly derivative from any specific style.
DAPHNE MERKIN, panelist, former New Yorker essayist and cultural critic
An enticing collection.
DIANA ABU-JABER, author of The Language of Baklava and Crescent
The stories in Scott Nadelsons The Cantors Daughter seethe with psychological insight.
CAI EMMONS, author of His Mothers Son
Nadelson, a tireless investigator of the missed opportunity, works in clear prose that possesses a tremolo just below the surface.
STACEY LEVINE, author of My Horse and Other Stories and Dra--
This is a thoughtful collection, compassionate yet unsparing in its observations. Only connect, reads the oft-quoted passage from E.M. Forsters Howards End. If only the characters in these stories could.
THE OREGONIAN
Authentic Careful stories about suburban New Jersey Jews turn on the inescapable mix of love and destruction Nadelson bears unflinching witness to his characters darkness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nadelson tells his stories in unpretentious prose in which the writer is mostly invisible, a quality he has further refined in this second collection. Nadelsons prose is sturdy but not flashy, almost workmanlike. As a mason lays bricks, he stacks one sentence upon another until slowly, a story emerges.
THE PORTLAND MERCURY
A strong literary work of fiction, a quiet book that has much potential.
THE JEWISH WEEK
Nadelsons best trick is slipping complex emotions and startling revelations between smooth and steady sentences, as a mother mixes in peas with the mashed potatoes so her child will eat his vegetables unwittingly.
WILLAMETTE WEEK
Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories
Winner of the H.L. Davis Award for Short Fiction at the 2004 Oregon Book Awards Winner of the GLCA 2005 New Writers Award
These extremely well-written and elegantly wrought stories are rigorous, nuanced explorations of emotional and cultural limbo-states. Saving Stanley is a substantial, serious, and intelligent contribution to contemporary Jewish American writing.
DAVID SHIELDS, author of Enough About You: Adventures in Autobiography and A Handbook for Drowning
Scott Nadelsons stories are bracing, lively, humorous, honest. A splendid debut.
EHUD HAVAZELET, author of Like Never Before and What Is It Then Between Us
Scott Nadelsons fine first story collection achieves a rare balance between compassionate comedy and an unswerving attention to the dark trials of family life
MARJORIE SANDOR, author of Portrait of My Mother, Who Posed Nude in Wartime and The Night Gardener
Equally powerful with narrative and dialogue, he is a writer in full possession of both his material and his craft.
SUSAN THAMES, author of Ill Be Home Late Tonight
Its thrilling to watch a young talent reach out and grasp the essence of an art form, particularly a form as rich and nuanced as the short story. Smart, funny, and heartbreaking, Saving Stanley is an uncommonly exciting debut.
TRACY DAUGHERTY, author of Five Shades of Shadow and Axemans Jazz
I wish I could write such sentences.
JOSIP NOVAKOVICH, author of Salvation and Other Disasters