Stern:: A Novel
About this ebook
“An iridescent tour de force...Mr. Friedman’s style is pure delight-supple, carnal, humorous and at times slightly surrealistic.”—The New York Times Book Review
“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 viscera instead of cerebrum.”—Nelson Algren in The Nation
“A strange and touching novel...funny and sad at the same time...in the tradition of a Charlie Chaplin movie.”—Time
About the author
Bruce Jay Friedman (born April 26, 1930) is an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor.
He was born to a Jewish family and raised in the Bronx, the son of Irving and Mollie (Liebowitz) Friedman. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and then attended the University of Missouri as a journalism major. He then served as a First Lieutenant in the United States Air Force from 1951-1953. In 1954, he married the model (now an acting coach and writer) Ginger Howard. In the same year, Friedman worked for many of the era’s famous men’s magazines through Magazine Management Company. Friedman ended up as an executive editor in charge of the magazines Men (not the present magazine of the same title), Male, and Man’s World.
In 1962, Friedman published Stern, the first of his eight novels. This was followed in 1964 with A Mother’s Kisses and four other novels in the 1970s and 80s. He also wrote short fiction, the first titles Black Angels: Stories and Far From the City of Class both appearing in 1966. His latest collection of short fiction, Three Balconies: Stories and a Novella, was published in 2008. Amongst his non-fiction works are his memoirs, Lucky Bruce: A Literary Memoir, published in 2011.
Friedman has appeared in film and television, including The Heartbreak Kid (1972), The Ted Bessell Show (1973) (TV), and the 1988 Woody Allen film, Another Woman.
