September / october 2006:

Tales from the dark side
Elisa Albert's debut short story collection covers the gamut from bat mitzvah antics to a Philip Roth obsession. We go inside the acerbic and witty mind of our generation's newest literary wunderkind.

by Chanie Cohen



Turns out, that in Brooklyn Heights, meeting at the Starbucks on Court Street is pretty non-descript. There are two of them. As I sit drinking my iced vanilla latte, I dial Elisa Albert’s number, wait two rings, and hear her breathy voice on the other side of the line. “I guess you’re probably at the other Starbucks on Court Street,” she says loudly over the blaring horns in the background. “I’ll be there in two.” I close the phone and think how nice of her it was to come meet me at the “wrong” Starbucks instead of chastising me for my “Jersey girl” error.

A few moments later, Elisa Albert is easing into the chair opposite me, gushing an apology. I immediately warm to her calm, easy nature and can’t help but notice our similarities on this hot downtown morning. Hair up, sunglasses perched on our heads, our faces “glowing” from the heat.

Albert goes to order and, as I sit sipping my nearly-finished coffee (after all, I had been in the shop fifteen minutes prior), I try to put my finger on what sets her apart from the others in line ordering their morning java jolt. Oh yes — it’s presence. At 5’11”, Albert, a nice Jewish girl from LA, stands a few inches over everybody else in line. As she comes back to the table, she lets her curly black hair out of a clip and it falls neatly to her shoulders.

Taking a moment from her busy schedule, the 28-year old Albert is here to chat with me about the recent debut of her short-story collection, How This Night is Different.

In Albert’s sassy critically-acclaimed new release, she tackles the issues facing young Jews who struggle with their religious identity — in stories like “The Living,” about hormonally charged teenagers on a concentration camp teen tour, and “Everything But” about a sexually frustrated mother who regresses to teenage antics at her niece’s bat mitzvah.

As far back as she remembers, Albert was always interested in reading. “My father actually has a really funny home movie, and I’m pushing this baby stroller around the backyard,” she recalls. “Except instead of a doll in it, it had my favorite book.”

But it wasn’t until her college and post-graduate writing workshops that she found her voice through writing. “As a writer, you kind of find out what your obsessions are with.” Albert looks at the make-believe notebook in front of her, feigning sudden recognition. “Oh, those are my issues!”

“It just kind of slowly dawned on me that I had been turning in stories to workshop and all my stories had been about Jews in Jewish settings wrestling with their identity.”

Albert’s Jewish identity seems to be a strong one. Growing up in a Conservative home, she attended day school until sixth grade, Hebrew school through twelfth, and Camp Ramah every summer in between.

Ah, this is the opportunity I was waiting for. After reading a few of the short stories in her book, it became clear to me that institutionalized Judaism — Jewish summer camps, programs, and the like — clearly rubbed her the wrong way.

I take a deep breath and come out with it. “So what’s your gripe with these places?” It takes me a few minutes to get it out of her, but I eventually do.

“I guess it’s their obsession with Jewish continuity to the exclusion of anything else that matters in the world. Israel-is-wonderful. Marry-a-Jew. Have-lots-of-babies,” Alberts mimics in a robotic voice. “If it was rooted in something a little more realistic, more rational, it would be great.”

Another reason why Albert has some not-so-fond memories of her summer camp days — “I also was extremely unpopular...” she trails off, and then laughs wryly. “I find even now, I’m pretty happy with my life, but whenever I’m around teenagers, they scare the s--t out of me.” She glances out to the busy sidewalk “I’ll be walking, and I’ll see a group of 15-year-olds, and I’m like ‘Oh no, don’t say anything mean to me’. I’m just a big dork.”

But she’s a dork no longer. Dating fellow fiction writer Edward Schwarzschild (author of last year’s hit Responsible Men) and hostess of Friday night dinners for many of her friends, Albert’s social life seems to be in order. But it is her writing career that is really gaining momentum. Calling How This Night is Different a “Hot Debut” of 2006, Kirkus Reviews says “the author’s command of her craft should impress anyone who appreciates short fiction, and her characters are so singularly human that their power to charm and engage transcends religious affiliation.”

Our coffee cups have long been empty, and I ask Albert about the New Jew revolution, in which many young Jews are now finding it hip to be Jewish through the likes of Jon Stewart, Heeb magazine, and Ali G, and wonder out loud if it’s helpful or hurtful to young Jews looking to connect with Judaism.

“I keep getting these questions and I just don’t have the right sound bytes yet,” Albert laughs. “I don’t think Heeb is bad,” she continues. “I don’t think bagels and lox are bad, but if it’s totally untethered [to anything], if it has no link to anything really Jewish, it’s just like bagels and lox. It’s not Jewish.” She pauses and thinks for a moment. “If it’s this vague cultural identity out of ignorance, then there’s no there, there.”

The conversation turns back to her writing, which though she insists is not autobiographical, is telling of the centricity of Jewish identity in her life. “For me, it’s an individual thing. My religious identity is this idiosyncratic, ever changing, evolving thing,” Albert says impassioned.

She describes this compilation of short stories as the “perfect storm” of her coming into her identity as a writer, and using her years spent in Jewish schools and camps to look at character’s lives, this time from an outsider’s perspective. Tragic and comic all at once, her stories depict the struggles of young Jews trying to tap into something bigger than themselves, and not always being successful.

In her last story, Albert writes a love letter to Philip Roth, and in the likeness of one of her favorite authors, she obscures the line between fiction and reality. “Half of the autobiographical details in that story are true and half are not,” she says. “Some people can’t draw the line between fiction and reality so the last story is like, ‘You think you know me? F--k you.’”

Irreverence coupled with firm roots in her religion. An intriguing combination that Albert will soon find has many people indeed trying to get to know her.


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