Three Balconies: Stories and a Novella [Hardcover]

I have been reading Bruce Jay Friedman for years and have long thought him to be the funniest writer in America. His latest book of short stories, THREE BALCONIES, is vintage Friedman in that reading any of his works of fiction is like looking at the world through a mildly distorting fun house mirror. His characters and situations and the language he uses are slightly askew, and his characters' lives are slightly off balance.
Friedman's stories often involve role reversals - a psychiatrist and his patient gradually switch roles - and the characters are frequently people who are indecisive and unsure of themselves to the point that they - maddeningly - think rather than act.
But for me the treat in reading Friedman is his use of language. Friedman's humor is based in absurdity, incongruity, and inappropriateness. Some examples:

From the story "Fit as a Fiddle" - "Dugan took a seat in the (hospital) waiting room and was alone, except for a bartender who had suffered a clamming injury on his day off." The bartender has nothing to do with the story and a writer playing it straight might have written "a man who had been slightly injured in a car crash." But not Friedman. His man is not only a bartender when it matters not at all to the story, but he has suffered an apropos-of-nothing and mildly absurd injury. Friedman entertaining with language.

From the same story, Dugan's old friends have begun to die off and Dugan, though 'fit as a fiddle' is becoming nervous about death and illness - his and others'. "At the fish store, the following morning, a woman he barely knew gave him an update on her husband's condition in a nursing home. 'Mel's incontinent,' she shouted across the shellfish counter." I find the thought of someone yelling this in a grocery store very funny, and the shellfish counter - like the bartender with the clamming accident - is a wholly Friedmanesque exercise in off center detail. Or, as Friedman would call it, a tidbit.

For another example of Friedman's unique linguistic style, from "Three Balconies": "Obviously he did not do well on balconies. So why sit out on them and try to become brilliant at it?" Not "and eventually overcome his fear", but "become brilliant at" sitting on balconies. Pure Friedman.

And finally, to demonstrate Friedman's use of absurdity and incongruity - with a little of the language thrown in - from "The Great Beau LeVyne": Cliff Adams, the first person narrator, is at a sophisticated party at a luxurious Manhattan apartment and gets into an argument with the host, Sergei Volkov. "When I took offense, a cry went up from his stunning wife who produced a pair Tsarist sabers, handing one to each of us and encouraging us to use them. When a circle of guests formed around us, the host and I began to lunge at one another with the priceless weapons." But as is also common to Friedman, the duel ends indecisively, no one is hurt, and nothing is resolved. Later at home that evening Cliff notices "a perfect ring of bite marks on my shoulders. Thinking back, I recalled that Volkov had sunk his teeth into me at the door in what I thought of at the time as a show of Slavic camaraderie."

Friedman has mellowed somewhat since his first novel, Stern, was published in 1962, but his absurdity, incongruity, linguistic tidbits have remained constant. I'm not quite as enthusiastic about his non-fiction, but I would recommend Friedman's fiction to any and everyone.

Hilarious and thought-provoking stories about the frailties of human nature and the neurotic goings-on of creative and ordinary souls. Highly recommended.

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