Bram Stoker

The Man Annotated Signet Classics Bram Stoker

The brilliant, beautifully-crafted short story collection To Be a Man, by Nicole Krauss, explores through the lenses of multiple perspectives and narrators, in a variety of settings, including New York, Tel Aviv, Europe, and Latin America, what it means to be a husband, son, friend, lover, father, and brother-namely, what it means to be a man. Krauss' pithy, perfectly pitched, precise prose, which she conveys through first-person female and male narrators as well as third-person narrators, proffers profound, sometimes wry or funny observations about what it means to be human. While the title of her collection refers to "man," her stories focus on women, too. Perhaps Krauss is questioning what it means to be a mensch, a term derived from German and Yiddish, meaning a human being or man, an admirable person of good character. For most of the men or humans in her stories, while different from one another, possess a certain rectitude or character. Many of the stories in the collection, from the first "Switzerland" to the last "To Be a Man" examine the ethical, emotional, and experiential legacies that parents and friends pass on to the next generation. As the narrator of "Switzerland" concludes, "a person can happen to you and only a lifetime later does this happening ripen, burst, and deliver itself."