In Brief: “The Prophet of Tenth Street”

By Mad Dog
Published: Mar 27, 2012

Tsipi Keller and I were on a literary committee. After the meetings, we talked baseball, sealing our non-literary friendship. So I was stunned that this Israeli-born writer whose bio is dotted with grants and prizes would write a novel as sexy — really: as dirty — as Jackpot. Her new novel couldn’t be more different. “The Prophet of Tenth Street” is Marcus Weiss, a New Yorker who sells his business and becomes, of all things, a novelist.  It is beyond difficult to write fiction about a fiction-maker; not only do you have to get into the guy’s head, you’ve got to create a plot in which something actually happens. Keller does both, and in a way that’s unnerving — how does she know so much about what it means to be a man, trapped in his head, convinced he will find and reveal the essential truths of life? [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]