"...so energized it may make you suffer a little." —Budd Schulberg, author of On the Waterfront
Cool, elegant, and yet surprisingly offbeat, the thirteen stories in Between the Flags lay bare the contradictions of American life since World War II. The collection opens with "As I Am I Will Be," as its central character, Little Boy, faces civilian life after the war. It ends with the title story, in which a nameless man fights for his life against the sea and afterward realizes how little of his identity he carries away. Between these two periods—the forties and the eighties, youth and old age—life stories filled with regret, humor, and subtle complications.
Friedman's characters struggle against the walls that hem in their lives. The desire to recover the sexual energy of youth propels one character into a confrontation with priapism. An art critic and the painter she made famous nourish and then finally consume each other's talents. In "Whisper," a man cherishes the anonymity that allows him to move freely in his pursuit of "zeros" (money). "Whisper," a prescient parable for the eighties, was expanded into a novel and recommended for a National Book Award by William Gass.
