Almost single-handedly, he gives a good name to artistic impulses that have been long out of fashion and against which weaker, less mature talents need to be warned. He is, like Saul Bellow’s fictional Herzog, a man of heart, but his sense of humor is healthier than Herzog’s. Stern’s agonizings often end in smiles, or in tears of joy. No less a realist than anyone else, Stern nevertheless conjures redemption. In a poetic style formally reminiscent of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, Stern strikes a tone that has affinities with Isaac Bashevis Singer and Bernard Malamud—the bittersweet cantorial voice of blissful suffering and redemptive faith.