What makes these books delightful, for me, is their worldly, tolerant understanding of human frailty: the author's refusal to condemn, preach morality or be shocked by his characters' infidelities and errors.

Leonard Michaels had a trenchant, elegantly forceful style that cut to the bone; what impresses me the most, as a fellow essayist, is that he always tried to get to the bottom of what he knew and understand.