The eight stories collected here for the first time can be read in sequence as a novella illuminating the moral life of their hero, mathematician Raphael Nachman. A progression of comic misadventures and ethical triumphs, the stories mark their hero’s passage from anxious youth to less anxious middle age. The Nachman Stories is praised as the capstone to the career of a master of the American short story.

This edition is introduced with critical essays by Robert Pinsky and Diana Ketcham and a biographical essay by Robert Hass and Morton Paley, who were colleagues of Michaels at the University of California at Berkeley. It contains nine photographic portraits of the author, taken over the course of his career as a writer between 1962 and 1995. All are from the collection of the Michaels family. 

Production Details

• Edition of 300 numbered copies for sale

• Large octavo in format, 9 7/8 by 6 ½ inches, 164 pages

• Bound in full blue cloth, with a diagonal yellow paper label

• Arion Press publication #84, 2009