NORMAN'S COUSIN & OTHER WRITINGS

<p>In Singer's latest book the engine is story-telling but beneath the plots lurk layers of madness and magic as well as startling genre-busting juxtapositions. For example two related stories Buying a Car and Selling a Car are N.Y. City picaresques combined with technical automotive detail and the history of a marriage. Written almost three decades apart these two stories mirror their times from the 1970's recession to the wave of immigration that was a by-product of the war in Afghanistan.</p><p><br></p><p>The play Voir Dear is also about an immigrant (Russian-Jewish); its themes are race justice language and family relationships. Race and justice are also the themes of Simple and family relationships are at the heart of Norman's Cousin. The final piece in the collection Flagman is about a Cuban immigrant but the narrator is a racist and nativist. A constant note in this edgy passionate collection is mockery of public officials. A leitmotif is the inexorable rise in the cost-of-living as well as other important changes to life in the city.</p><p><br></p><p>Norman's Cousin & Other Writings is full of allusions to literature and the other arts. Simple takes its title from Langston Hughes and alludes to the history of rhythm-and-blues. Carla the Copy-Shop Girl a satirical libretto is an analogue to Melville's Bartleby The Scrivener with echoes of Horatio Alger. The Rented Pet combines several genres including local color animal saga and Grade-B Hollywood melodrama. As the heroine Mildred Schapp says when she rents the grizzled canine hero Rex I like ... an older dog.</p>