Leonard Michaels

Who was Leonard Michaels?

Leonard Michaels was an American writer of short stories, novels, and essays. He was born in New York City to Jewish parents; his father was born in Poland. He went to college and earned his B.A. from New York University and went on to acquire an M.A. as well as a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Michigan, before spending most of his adult life in Berkeley, California.

Going Places, his first book of short stories, made his reputation as one of the most brilliant of that era's fiction writers; the stories are urbane, funny, and written in a private, hectic diction that gives them a remarkable edge. The follow-up, coming six years later, was I Would Have Saved Them If I Could, a collection considered by some as strong as the first.

The Men's Club, Michaels' first novel, is a story-like, relatively short comedic work that simultaneously attacks and celebrates the absurdities of men as they gather in a kind of urban support group. In 1986, the novel was made into a film, directed by Peter Medak, with the screenplay by Michaels, and starring Roy Scheider, Harvey Keitel, Stockard Channing, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Frank Langella.

Sylvia is a fictionalized memoir of Michael's first wife, Sylvia Bloch, who committed suicide.