SOURCE: A review of Mourner at the Door, in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. VIII, No. 3, Fall, 1988, pp. 157-58.

Malin is an American critic. In the following laudatory review, he praises Lish 's use of language in his short fiction.

I must quote the following long epigraph because it is the key to Lish's amazing collection:

It is reported that Wittgenstein's last words were these: "Tell them that I had a wonderful life." Perhaps he did and perhaps he did not—have a wonderful life. But how could Wittgenstein have known one way or the other? As to a further matter, suppose that these were not the words—suppose the words were German words. What I want to know is this—is it the same thing to have a wonderful life in another language? Or put it this way—if another language was the the language that...