[The] temptation to write a perfect novel is … natural, especially to a writer like Leonard Michaels, who comes to it by way of the short story….

The novel is the great test for a fiction writer—but a test of what? Peter Taylor, surely one of our best short story writers, once said in an interview that he suspected that a talent for the shorter form was incompatible with a novelistic talent. The novel, alas, is much messier than the short story, and some short story writers—the impeccable Borges, for one—won't touch it. The difference between the two seems to have to do with perfectibility.

The Men's Club begins as if Michaels is willing to risk imperfection. "Women wanted to talk about anger, identity, politics, etc." says the narrator, a college professor who has just been invited to join a men's club. He balks. "I should have said yes immediately, but something in me resisted. The prospect of leaving my house after dinner to go to a meeting. Blood is heavy then. Brain is slow. Besides, wasn't this club idea corny?…"

Right away we hear the distinctive cadence of the narrator's voice and feel the strongly conflicting desires within him. He attends the meeting, of course. (p. 4)

Yet what takes place … is strangely, ruefully subdued. The seven men who've gathered there—a doctor, a therapist, an accountant, a once-famous basketball player, all "solid types"—cast about at first to define the purpose of their club…. They end up telling each other stories. (pp. 4-5)

The form of this novel owes something to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in which the pilgrims lighten their journey by telling stories. To make sure that we don't miss the connection, Michaels has named one of his characters Harold Canterbury. And to make sure that we don't miss the ironic nature of the comparison, he has made Canterbury the most silent and grudging member of the club, the most distrustful of the stories that are told.

Chaucer's stories are wonderfully artful and full of guile. They reflect the personality of the teller in a sly, singular way. The stories told at the men's club are artless and they don't reflect personality so much as they reflect a condition….

The stories in The Men's Club may not apply to millions—the members are white, prosperous, and more or less monogamous—but almost any of the stories could be told by any member of the club. They all speak in a direct, muted voice like the narrator's (the only exception is Kramer, poor Kramer, who is, like, very Californian). And while the characters are very distinct from one another physically, Michaels calls attention to their similarities rather than their differences. He wants us to recognize that their stories are common property, ours as well as theirs.

He also wants us to recognize that the stories have no point. Several times during the evening, one of the men begins to speak with enthusiasm, only to realize that the story doesn't lead anywhere….

That accounts for the dignity which these men acquire during their long evening together. They don't know what their stories mean, but they are willing, even driven, to tell them, to entrust them to the others, and that's enough. During their meeting, they move from awkwardness to intimacy to something deeper, more dangerous and more primitive than sympathy…. By the end of the night all seven men are howling together, literally howling, like a pack of wolves….

That lament is the way this meeting has to end, the wail of loss and longing these men are doomed to raise. It is the perfect conclusion to the drift of their emotions—perfect, but the only thing eerie about that howl is that it is so dispassionate. It is represented as a metaphor, not an event. The howl cannot be said to happen….

I don't think that it is too much to ask that a novel about passion be passionate itself. In The Men's Club, however, the passions are figurative, not felt. This funny, brilliant and, yes, perfect novel is oddly sedate, and that may be too great a price to pay for perfection. We get the meaning, but we miss the experience. (p. 5)