The Collected Stories

First acclaimed as a story-length memoir, then expanded into a novel, draws us into the lives of a young couple whose struggle to survive Manhattan in the early 1960s involves them in sexual fantasias, paranoia, drugs, and the extreme intimacy of self-destructive violence.

Reproducing a time and place with extraordinary clarity, Leonard Michaels explores with self-wounding honesty the excruciating particulars of a youthful marriage headed for disaster.

Seven men, friends and strangers, gather in a house in Berkeley. They intend to start a men's club, the purpose of which isn't immediately clear to any of them; but very quickly they discover a powerful and passionate desire to talk. First published in 1981, is a scathing, pitying, absurdly dark and funny novel about manhood in the age of therapy. "The climax is fitting, horrific, and wonderfully droll" ().