SAN DIEGO – Imagine that you are an amateur chemist who comes upon a way to manufacture wheat. Such an invention could end hunger worldwide, would it not? There would be celebrations for you, perhaps a Nobel Prize, and everywhere you’d go, you’d be the subject of popular acclaim.
Or would you?
In this collection of short stories, Jeffrey M. Feingold imagined that the amateur chemist worked in a matzo factory and that his constant exposure to the leavened-bread-making process enabled him to build a machine that could manufacture wheat from the chemicals within that grain’s makeup.
The story is one of seven included in There Is No Death in Finding Nemo, a title shared by the last story in the collection. That one deals with the arguments that a long-married couple, somewhat disappointed in each other, have. Can you remember if any character in the animated feature Finding Nemo died? And would you care if you did?
One of the stories in the collection deals with a fellow who keeps a list, with scores, of all the women he has bedded. Another deals with a fellow, worried about aging, who likes to stand naked in front of his mirror to check out the way his body looks. A third story poses the question if you had absolute power of life and death over others, how would you use it—if at all? Still another relates how a bipolar pianist met the challenge of her stage fright. And one more considers how an adult grandson reacts to the dementia that causes his elderly grandfather to believe he is back in the Ukraine with people coming to kill him and the other Jews in the village.
Feingold is a wonderful storyteller as I was happy to report earlier this month when I reviewed The Black Hole Pastrami, another collection of his short stories. As I wrote then, “Feingold’s writing is part whimsy, part serious reflection, all tied together with humor.”
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com