Mneme’s Place

About the Book

Mneme’s Place is Ralph Jonas’ internal refuge from his anxieties and the pressures of everyday life, a timeless place where he relives his memories and drinks with friends and colleagues, with authors and their characters, with scientists, criminals, psychologists, sociologists, ballet dancers, musicians, artists, and on and on, multitudes of people he has known, or not known, but read and read about.

Jonas’ two big passions are the English language, as spoken by the Irish, and baseball. He is at his most comfortable with the tens of thousands of ballplayers at Mneme’s, and often spends time assembling two All-Star teams, one Jewish and one Polish, himself the manager of both.

Having fled Hollywood for Europe to regain his sanity after years of writing for TV, Jonas attempts to write a novel about his former writing partners, his own dysfunctional family—mother, father, sister—and the Isaacsons, his mother’s family, the likes of whom have never been written in American immigrant literature. While it proves impossible for Jonas to put these people down on paper, Wolfe has created a fascinating and unforgettable lineup of characters.

About the Author

Glenn P. Wolfe was a longtime Hollywood writer of comedy and detective teleplays and contributed to such series as Perry Mason, Surfside Six, Ann Sothern, and others. After spending several years in Europe, he returned to New York. He died in 2007 while working on the final volume of Mneme’s Place.