The Cynic in Extremis

by Jacob M. Appel

Overview

Eclectic characters in everyday scenarios populate Jacob M. Appel’s The Cynic in Extremis. We attend a sister’s second wedding with a “hand-me-down groom”; trick-or-treat with a young son; encounter a former teacher long retired, still critical; relive difficult ancestral memories of the Holocaust. These poems present—often unapologetically—uncomfortable truths gleaned from close examination of social norms and conventions mostly taken for granted. Full of fun, wit, and insight, The Cynic in Extremis is a finalist for the 2017 Able Muse Book Award.

PRAISE FOR THE CYNIC IN EXTREMIS:

The narrative poems in Jacob M. Appel’s The Cynic in Extremis cast a cold eye on present and past, personal and political. But like the cynics in their classical conception, the poet’s subtext here is hope, at least love, and living without illusion in the extremis of the quotidian. These are mordantly moving, even entertaining poems, always thoughtful and frequently elegiac.
—Dan O’Brien, author of War Reporter

Like his stories—approachable, insightful, and touched with a tinge of sadness for what was and, indeed, is—Appel’s poems speak in straightforward, plain language to raise the curtain on the intimacies of his world. New York City with its pigeon lady, the palsied pharmacist, Luigi the barber, beak-nosed Molly Seward’s father, and, oh yes, the many girls who “left me breathless” and alone. You can almost hear their footsteps walking the cement pavement. Although good-humored and delightfully smart-alecky, the collection has a dark undercurrent, for it is Holocaust-haunted as he is, as we all are who escaped the horror but are doomed to remember and bear witness.
—Alice Friman, author of The View from Saturn

From this masterful collection arises the sense that, with the end so woefully unpredictable and fate so fickle-hearted, to waste any moment amounts to a sin. Quirky characters, often full of longing and regret, pepper Appel’s work, like the uncle so cynical he “steered clear of con games like synagogue/ And life insurance” and his compassionate opposite, the pigeon-feeding, environment-destroying Mrs. Z. These characters seem to fail to leave a mark on the world, beyond the poet’s eye.
—Brigit Young (from the foreword), author of Worth a Thousand Words

Both beautifully written and lively, the poems in The Cynic in Extremis embrace the world with warmth and wit. The portraits of family members and friends, workers and teachers, neighbors and a first love, some set in a time long gone, are wonderfully free of nostalgia and sentimentality. Human virtue, vice and folly all have a welcome place, because there’s a tone of understanding, forgiveness and humor that pervades this book and makes it a joy to read.
—John Skoyles, author of Suddenly It’s Evening and poetry editor at Ploughshares

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jacob M. Appel is a physician, attorney, and bioethicist based in New York City. He is the author of seven collections of short fiction, five novels, and a collection of essays. His short stories have been published in more than two hundred journals and have been short-listed for the O. Henry Award, Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. His commentary on law, medicine, and ethics has appeared in the New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Detroit Free Press, and other major newspapers. He taught for years at Brown University and currently teaches at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781773490144
Publisher:	Able Muse Press
Publication date:	06/04/2018
Pages:	78
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.19(d)

About the Author

Jacob M. Appel is a physician, attorney, and bioethicist based in New York City. He is the author of seven collections of short fiction, five novels, and a collection of essays. His short stories have been published in more than two hundred journals and have been short-listed for the O. Henry Award, Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. His commentary on law, medicine, and ethics has appeared in the New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Detroit Free Press, and other major newspapers. He taught for years at Brown University and currently teaches at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Table of Contents

vi Acknowledgments

ix Foreword

3 Visiting Alumnus

5 Summer Camp Socials

7 Touring Greenwich Village

8 Concurrences

10 Below Fragile Skies

11 Coop

12 Infidelity

13 RMS Lusitania Departs for Liverpool

14 Trick-or-Treating in Suburbia

16 Escheatment

17 The Cynic in Extremis

18 Comedy for the New Millennium

19 Murder-Suicide

20 Anti-Poem for an Inaugural

21 First Crush

22 Yet

23 1939

25 A Collective Endeavor

27 Jury Duty

29 Learning to Discard

30 Homage to Assimilation

31 Flying with Clarity

33 Assembling the Exercycle

34 Transaction Costs

35 Reckoning

36 Caveat

38 Blind Date with a Poet

39 Precipitation

40 Family Tree

41 Blackberry Winter

42 My Sister Remarries

43 Heir to Hippocrates

45 Distinctions

46 On Holiday

47 Solid Ground

48 Bad News from God

49 Our Dog Turns Eighteen

50 On the Sudden Death of a Beloved Acquaintance

51 Variations on a Holocaust

53 Shrinking with Doubt

54 Example

56 The Homely Girls

58 Snow Again

Editorial Reviews

The narrative poems in Jacob M. Appel’s The Cynic in Extremis cast a cold eye on present and past, personal and political. But like the cynics in their classical conception, the poet’s subtext here is hope, at least love, and living without illusion in the extremis of the quotidian. These are mordantly moving, even entertaining poems, always thoughtful and frequently elegiac.

—Dan O’Brien, author of War Reporter

Like his stories—approachable, insightful, and touched with a tinge of sadness for what was and, indeed, is—Appel’s poems speak in straightforward, plain language to raise the curtain on the intimacies of his world. New York City with its pigeon lady, the palsied pharmacist, Luigi the barber, beak-nosed Molly Seward’s father, and, oh yes, the many girls who “left me breathless” and alone. You can almost hear their footsteps walking the cement pavement. Although good-humored and delightfully smart-alecky, the collection has a dark undercurrent, for it is Holocaust-haunted as he is, as we all are who escaped the horror but are doomed to remember and bear witness.

—Alice Friman, author of The View from Saturn

From this masterful collection arises the sense that, with the end so woefully unpredictable and fate so fickle-hearted, to waste any moment amounts to a sin. Quirky characters, often full of longing and regret, pepper Appel’s work, like the uncle so cynical he “steered clear of con games like synagogue/ And life insurance” and his compassionate opposite, the pigeon-feeding, environment-destroying Mrs. Z. These characters seem to fail to leave a mark on the world, beyond the poet’s eye.

—Brigit Young (from the foreword), author of Worth a Thousand Words

Both beautifully written and lively, the poems in The Cynic in Extremis embrace the world with warmth and wit. The portraits of family members and friends, workers and teachers, neighbors and a first love, some set in a time long gone, are wonderfully free of nostalgia and sentimentality. Human virtue, vice and folly all have a welcome place, because there’s a tone of understanding, forgiveness and humor that pervades this book and makes it a joy to read.

—John Skoyles, author of Suddenly It’s Evening and poetry editor at Ploughshares

From the Publisher

2018-03-19
These collected poems explore memory, regret, and missed connections.Along with being a bioethicist, physician, and lawyer, Appel (The Amazing Mr. Morality: Stories, 2018, etc.) is also a prolific, award-winning writer of short stories, novels, essays, and plays. He now offers a collection of 43 witty, thoughtful poems, many of which were previously published in literary journals. Appel's poetry has a narrative quality that's appropriate for a fiction writer, telling compressed stories that often end in moments of realization or summation. In the title poem, for example, the first line provides a nutshell character sketch: "You could never put one over on my uncle." Instances follow: "Scoured his returned change for Canadian pennies, / Steered clear of con games like synagogue / And life insurance." The poet makes no judgment about the uncle's cynicism or lack of mercy; he simply does the compassionate thing by visiting him when no one else will. But the uncle remains himself: "Of course, you've come, he says, /… / You were always a sucker." Con artists and chumps are a recurring motif in Appel's fiction, with tension between the morality of truth and the comfort, even the magic, of illusion. Is it wrong to be a sucker if it means a dying old man gets a visit from a family member? Other poems consider mortality and the past's irretrievability, such as "Summer Camp Socials," which recalls a girl who's cheerful despite being ostracized at a dance for her bald scalp. Looking back, the speaker writes that she "stars in the revision of my life," one in which he asks her to dance, but in his "unrevised life, she is still waiting." The past can't be made up for; imagination can revise, but life resists editing. Even the future is unsusceptible to change, as in "The Homely Girls," where a kindergarten teacher predicts that the unattractive girls have only steely endurance ahead of them. Of course it's possible for even homely girls to have fulfilling lives, but the teacher, like the uncle, is paying the price for cynicism—sourness that overtakes all perceptions.A strong collection of insightful narrative poems.

Kirkus Reviews