Mitch Berman is an American fiction writer known for his imaginative range, exploration of characters beyond the margins of society, lush prose style and dark humor.
''Time Capsule''
Berman's novel Time Capsule, the tale of a jazz saxophonist's journey across a post-apocalyptic America, was nominated by its publisher, Putnam, for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the Pulitzer Prize. A New York Times "New and Noteworthy Book,", the novel evoked comparisons with Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and the musicality of its author's style was noted by many critics, including Fanny Howe in The New York Times, the San Diego Union, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Kurt Vonnegut. Carolyn See, in The Los Angeles Times, hailed "a brave and heartening book" and the author's "absolutely perfect ear for dialogue." The novel's editor was the late Faith Sale, who also worked with Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Amy Tan and Kazuo Ishiguro.
Short stories
Berman's stories span an eclectic array of characters, settings and circumstances:
In "Wabi", a young rock guitarist, hammered into a coma by skinheads, awakens with no short-term memory to discover that his father has had a sex-change operation
In "Immoral Woman", a long-dead Shanghai silent film star escorts a contemporary movie critic to an unearthly realm of memory and regret
In "To Be Horst", a down-and-out passerby, mistaken by a young girl for her blind date, transforms himself into the man for whom he was mistaken
In "Scenes from the Films of Konkowsky as Recalled by the Executor of his Estate", a director caught in a devastating fire chooses to perish in his film vault along with his creations
In "The Death of Nu-Nu", an old man, invisible in Greenwich Village, grades imperceptibly into death
Berman's stories, nominated for seven Pushcart Prizes, have been named to two special mentions in the Pushcart Prizes and a one in The Best American Short Stories. Major anthologies in which his work is represented include Pow Wow: Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience, Voices of the Xiled: A Generation Speaks for Itself,The Male Body, and Sudden Fiction .
"Billy Moscow and Me", a short story, Descant, Winter 2008
Sensory Impact, May 2007, by the winners of the 2007 Arts Council Silicon Valley Artists' Fellowships in Fiction, May 2007
"The Death of Nu-Nu", a short story, TriQuarterly, Fall 2000
"A Walk in the Park", a short story, Southwest Review, Fall 1999
"A Story of Many Titles", a short story, AGNI, Spring 1995; reprinted in Temenos, 2001
"To These Guys", a short story, Witness, November 1994
"The Board", a short story, Confrontation, Fall 1994
"Voice-Over for the Documentary Scenes from the Films of Konkowsky as Recalled by the Executor of his Estate", a short story, Boulevard, Fall 1994
"The Urbane", a short story, Brooklyn Review, Summer 1994
"Wabi", a short story, Chicago Review, Fall 1993
Two haiku, Modern Haiku, June 1994
"To Be Horst", a short story, Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall 1993
"The Making of The Making of the Illusion of Gravity", a short story, Boulevard, Summer 1993
"The Day My Fingers Stopped", a short story, The Antioch Review, Fall 1992
"The Poorest Boy in Chicago", a short story, Southwest Review, Fall 1992, Pushcart Prize XVIII: 1993–1994: Best of the Small Presses; Pushcart Prize nominee, 1993; anthologized in Powwow: American Short Fiction from Then to Now, 2009, Da Capo/Perseus, hardcover and softcover, Ishmael Reed, Carla Blank, editors
"Malmö", a short story, Boulevard, Spring 1992
Interview with an Angel, a novella, The Gettysburg Review, Winter 1991
"From Be-Bop to Hip-Hop", a profile of jazz drummer Max Roach, Los Angeles Times Magazine, September 15, 1991
"Orwell's Bells", an eyewitness account of China's 1989 student movement, Conjunctions, May 1991
"J.P. Morgan Meets Kasparov", an article on chess hustlers in Washington Square Park, Smart magazine, January 1991
"Enemies: A Chess Story", a profile of world chess champions Kasparov and Karpov, Los Angeles Times Magazine, October 7, 1990
Children of the Dragon: The Story of Tiananmen Square, a collection of eyewitness accounts of and historical essays about the 1989 Chinese student movement, Collier/Macmillan, 1990
"Getting the Story on China", review of five books of nonfiction, Mother Jones, July 1990
"Is China Still Hopeful?" book review of Mu & Thompson's Crisis at Tiananmen, The Nation, 1990
"Very Quiet. Too Quiet", book review of Harrison Salisbury's Tiananmen Diary, The Nation, October 30, 1989
"Sweets from Harlan Ellison", book review of Ellison's Angry Candy, Los Angeles Times Book Review, 1989
"Bullets in Beijing", eyewitness account of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square, The Village Voice, June 20, 1989
"The Bradbury Chronicles", book review of Ray Bradbury's The Toynbee Convector, Los Angeles Times Book Review, 1988
Time Capsule, a novel, Putnam, 1987 ; Ballantine Books, 1988
