The Dialogues of Time and Entropy
Stories by Aryeh Lev Stollman
Riverhead Books • February 2003
"Stories about the everyday reverberate with magic and tragedy...An expert
weaver, Stollman brings together themes of religion, science, and love into
an emotional whole."
 — Kirkus Reviews |
"[Stollman] explores with great sensitivity our human frustrations with a universe that remains suspended somewhere between science and religion, appearing exquisitely rational at times but ultimately defying scientific explanation... Stollman seeks in The Dialogues of Time and Entropy to provide a suggestive literary framework for reconciling the wonders of science, the inexplicable power of desire and the mysteries of God."
— Laura Ciolkowski, The Washington Post
Click here to read the entire review:
Laws of Attraction (washingtonpost.com)
""What is a person?" a minor character asks in one of the stories in this radiant new collection. The question cuts to the heart of Aryeh Lev Stollman's most essential concern. For through spare, understated prose, Stollman, a neuroradiologist, magically accesses the emotional core of his human subjects...
"Ah, the soul. Not since Saul Bellow, perhaps, has an American writer so thoughtfully troubled over this fundamental concept. The literary landscape is currently crowded with light entertainments, often slickly told in present tense. Stollman's weightier fictions — elegantly written and wise — returns literature to its rightful role."
— The Miami Herald
"...That [Stollman] succeeds so admirably is testament to a writer who can
juggle the subtle ways in which the past (often a Holocaust past) imposes itself on the present or how the pain of this world is transcended into radiant visions of other possibilities — as he spins out sentences that dazzle in and of themselves. I can think of no other contemporary Jewish writer who brings such varied learning and such a penetrating intelligence to the enterprise of fiction writing. In his short stories, perhaps even more so than in his novels,
Stollman remains a marvel — richer, wiser and more humane as one haunting tale
fades into another."
— Sanford Pinsker, Hadassah Magazine
"Aryeh Lev Stollman['s] first collection of short stories, The Dialogues of
Time and Entropy, is in a league all its own... Stollman is what I imagine would emerge in the unlikely event that Stephen King and Cynthia Ozick were to raise a child together; he is by turns eerie and melancholy, acute in his understanding of the human mind, and vague about whether or not this
understanding can ever help one get to the bottom of the human experience. His stories would be outrageous if they did not ring true in their humanity... Stollman is intensely and passionately Jewish, and does not shy away from the mystical, nor does he see it as a separate matter from day-to-day life. But his characters all harbor some type of genius, which shapes — or unshapes — their
humanity... Stollman is so vastly knowledgeable about art, music, science, linguistics and religion, one wonders when he has time to practice medicine, or, for that matter, to write. Plumbing the depths of genius ought to be done by someone who is in touch with the phenomenon, which this physician and writer clearly is."
— Sara K. Eisen, The Jerusalem Report
Click here to read the entire review: Writing with a Retractable Lens (Sara K. Eisen, The Jerusalem Report)
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"The Little Poet"
Story, Autumn 1993
Cincinnati, Ohio
"My Story"
Story, Autumn 1999
Cincinnati, Ohio
"The Pillar of the World"
Story, Autumn 1994
Cincinnati, Ohio
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"Die Grosse Liebe"
Yale Review, July 1996
New Haven, CT
"New Memories"
The Fiddlehead, Summer 1989
Fredericton, New Brunswick
"Mr. Mitochondria"
Pakn Treger, Spring 2000
Amherst, MA
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"The Dialogues of Time and Entropy,"
American Short Fiction, Spring 1993
Austin, Texas
"The Creation of Anat"
American Short Fiction, Spring 1992
Austin, Texas
"The Seat of Higher Consciousness"
American Short Fiction, Winter 1993
Austin Texas
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"The Adornment of Days"
Southwest Review, Winter 1996
Dallas, Texas
"The King of Sura and the Queen of Pumbedita"
The University of Windsor Review, 1989
Windsor, Ontario
"Bring Me into Paradise"
Stories, Issue No. 20, 1988
Boston, Massachusetts
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"If I Have Found Favor in Your Eyes"
Tikkun, September/October 1996
Oakland, California
"Enfleurage"
Puerto del Sol, Spring 1991
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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"The Thread of Grace"
The Fiddlehead, Autumn 1990
Fredericton, New Brunswick
"Whatever Happened to Eva Moore?"
Wascana Review, Fall 1988
Regina, Canada
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From "Mr. Mitochondria," as published in Pakn Treger, Spring 2000
Illustration © Copyright Santiago Cohen
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