The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories by Max Apple
posted by admin in Home DepotIT’S been 20 years since Max Apple’s last work of fiction and more than a decade since his memoir of life with his grandfather, Roommates, became a national hit, spawning the movie of the same name starring Peter Falk. In the intervening years, Apple has kept a relatively low profile; his short fiction periodically shows up in magazines and journals, and he teaches writing at the University of Pennsylvania.
For a writer hailed as one of the finest satirists of the late 1970s for his iconic collection, The Oranging of America, Apple’s absence from literary circles has sadly made his fiction less and less known, to the point that he’s more often used in comparison than actually read.
Apple made his name skewering pop culture and finding relevance in the mundane and the absurd of Jewish life.The aims of his new collection, The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories, are no different in that regard, but significant anachronistic stumbles ensue.
It’s a hiccup that wouldn’t otherwise ruin a story, provided it came to a satisfying conclusion, both emotionally and structurally, but as with many of Apple’s tales here, it stops with such a simple epiphany that it leaves the reader grasping for the very reason we’ve gone on the journey at all.
Instead, Li witnesses a slice of a more probable future when she sees the Rockets’ halftime entertainment, a mascot named Turbo, leaping and flipping through the air to dunk the basketball and is entranced. Li drifts from her obsession with Yao to her affinity for Turbo immediately and, again, the story concludes without conflict, without true consequence for the folly of her belief.
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