If writers got gold stars for the risks they took, Leslie Epstein would get a handful for the title story of this collection of short fiction. "The Steinway Quintet" belongs to that rare and difficult genre, the story that is in some sense "about" large intellectual and philosophical problems. Two gun-waving, pill-popping Puerto Rican J. D.'s break into the Steinway Restaurant on Rivington Street—once a favorite haunt of Sarah Bernhardt and Einstein, but now the lonely relic of a vanished Jewish community—and hold the aged waiters, patrons and members of the restaurant orchestra hostage for a huge ransom and a plane to China.

The setup is almost too convenient for the conflict Epstein wants to illuminate between culture and violence, but as narrated by the pianist Goldkorn, self-proclaimed free-thinker and occasional tippler, "The Steinway Quintet" manages to be deft, original and very funny. At once...