INTERROGATING MEMORY
Despite disinterest from 100 literary agents, I self-published Interrogating Memory: Film Noir Spurs a Deep Dive Into My Family History…and My Own in May 2022. While you can find in on Amazon and BookBaby, you may also contact me for a less-expensive signed copy!
Here is what some folks I respect say about it:
David Mayhew: “Greatly have I enjoyed your new book, which kept me glued! It all flows well. Film noir is a real fetching theme! What an expert and connoisseur you are!”
Larry Harnisch: “It’s a good one!”
Morgan Richter: “I am enjoying it immensely.”
THE WEST PHILADELPHIA STORY (in progress)
[As of October 12, 2026] I have finished writing and editing The West Philadelphia Story: An Immigrant Jewish Journey (“TWPS”). TWPS focuses entirely on my Jewish ancestors, from their late-19th century migrations from the Pale of Settlement through my private adoption in 1966. It is another love letter to Philadelphia and my Jewish heritage, reminding us of the vital role immigrants played – and continue to play – in the economic and social well-being of the United States. The title riffs on the play and film The Philadelphia Story, which my mother, born Elaine Kohn in 1938, thought reflected life in the Main Line suburbs on the other side of nearby City Avenue.
The biggest hurdles were having my legal older sister genetically-tested through Ancestry.com. Analyzing Mindy’s DNA confirmed hypothesized relationships among my Berger ancestors, while revealing new relatives and one extraordinary fact: my great-great-grandfather Shmuel Mayer Berger did not die in the Pale of Settlement in the mid-1890s as I had speculated. He immigrated to Philadelphia in 1922, at the age of 80, after the death of his wife Esther Kunich and the October 1919 murder of his eldest son Louis in Bucks County, PA. Samuel Berger died in 1931 at the age of 89. The Associated Press reported he was 103 years old, but records from Pruzhany, in what is now Belarus, disprove this. In the meantime, careful exploration of passenger manifests and Russian tax records led me to rewrite the story of my maternal great-grandfather Jacob Gurmankin – who came from Odessa, not Kherson, as I mistakenly wrote here. Many questions answered, though some remain.
I plan to seek a proper literary agent – or go directly to publishers, depending how much the rules of engagement have changed in five years. I suspect TWPS is a very good fit for the University Presses at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. The latter was where my father, aunt, uncle, first cousin and a friend all matriculated.
MEET ME AT THE COUNTER (in planning)
I plan to call the final book in a loose “interrogating memory” trilogy Meet Me at the Counter: Tales of a GenX Idiosyncrat (“MMC”). Emerging themes of MMC are a sense that it is never “too late,” that one needs to trust one’s instincts and personal style, and that there is no single “correct path.” Embrace your unique self – and invent words like “idiosyncrat.”
MMC will likely be heavily informed by the specific psychology of Early GenX (Americans born between 1965 and 1972). We are the quiet, hard-to-faze problems solvers – the latchkey kids who learned to fend for themselves when nuclear annihilation seemed not just possible, but probable. Compared to that, everything else is merely “a thing to be done, and done well.”
Still, writing about my childhood is one thing. Writing about my adulthood – why I left Harvard ABD in 1995, the good and bad years with the woman my wife Nell calls “my first wife,” the tumultuous years in Philadelphia (2001-05) and the disheartening end of my time at the Boston University School of Public Health – demands a far more intense, public-facing introspection. It is one thing to do that in the occasional 4,000-word essay. It is another thing entirely to do that in a full-length book without sounding preachy, braggadocious or gloomy.
This is why I still plan to center MMC in a series of visits to a wide range of highly informal, preferably open 24/7, restaurants: diners, family restaurants and the undefinable in-between. Maybe a bar or two. There is no problem that cannot be solved over coffee and cinnamon French toast at 2 in the morning.
Thoughts, aid and advice are welcomed!
