Read what the critics had to say:
Absurdist, funny, tragic -- Norman Ravvin's short stories are exhilarating in their originality. The result of a startling alchemy, they combine old-fashioned fictional values with an off-kilter modernist technique, bringing together the dark old world of Europe and the bright new world of America.
In the title story, a Yiddish typewriter salesman and would-be writer finds unwanted inspiration in the voluptuous Lola. In Expatriate, a businessman wanders through Moscow in search of a painting stolen from his family during the war. And in Doomed Cinema, two New York agents try to buy a historic movie house and move it to an American theme park. The other stories in this remarkable collection are equally surprising and eerily delightful.
ISBN 0-9680457-1-5 / 80 pp / $12 plus $2 S/H
paperplates books found immediate success with its first title, Cary Fagan's novel The Doctor's House, which received unanimous praise from reviewers and quickly went into a second printing. Its second title, Sex, Skyscrapers, and Standard Yiddish, a collection of short stories by Norman Ravvin, received just as warm a reception. (Even while in manuscript, the collection proved to be a winner, with an Emerging Artists Award, established by the K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation.)
