By Grace Allen

Amid the uncertainty and solitude of the COVID pandemic, Jeffrey Feingold found himself assessing his life and his legacy. Many older family members were long gone, and the Norfolk resident realized he had nothing but memories of those relatives to leave his children. It would be the start of a writing journey dreamed of long ago but interrupted by life and circumstances.

When the world ground to a halt in 2020, Feingold, like so many others, started reflecting on his place in the world. He had told his children stories about the 1918 pandemic that he had heard from relatives.

“And now it’s a century later and we’re all living through this again,” he said. “I started to think, what if the next pizza box I touch is carrying the virus? What do I have to leave them? If I write down my memories, at least they’ll have that.”

He enrolled in a remote Grub Street workshop on creative non-fiction writing, and it was the springboard for his first book, “Black Hole Pastrami,” a series of short stories built around memories of relatives. Loosely autobiographical, the stories paint a picture of Feingold’s Ukrainian Jewish heritage that is both funny and poignant—not unlike most families. 

“I wanted to recreate the experiences I had with my relatives to give to my children, like the wonderful aunt who would take sugar packets from the diner because she lived through the Depression. I came to realize that the real loss for my children is that they didn’t know these people. That was the real intention of the book.”

Feingold says the short story form has always appealed to him, noting that novels tend to have a different feel and structure that he finds difficult to work with. 

“You can’t sustain the level of energy in a 1,000-page novel that you can in a short story of 5 or 10 or 20 pages,” he explained. “A short story is like opening a window and peering inside a building and there’s a character you’re seeing at a particular moment in time. It’s like a movie in a sense, and I just love that and find it more compelling than a novel which just goes on and on.”

All the stories in “Black Hole Pastrami” and in his second book, “There Is No Death in Finding Nemo,” were published to critical acclaim in literary journals over the span of a year. It was an astonishing journey for someone who had never published anything before.

“Feingold has a pleasantly unconventional descriptive style…a textured, imaginative debut collection. Inventive and emotionally observant writing.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Jeffrey M. Feingold writes with tremendous charm and has a gentle, affectionate attitude towards his characters…” – Indie Reader

Feingold says that while the awards and kudos serve as a nice type of validation, it’s the reviews by readers that have touched him the most. 

“When you hear that your stories are moving to people, whether to tears or because they are so hilariously funny that they can’t put the book down, there’s a joy in connecting with someone in that way.”

Feingold, 65, grew up wanting to be a writer but pivoted to a business degree at the University of Massachusetts, with minors in English literature and philosophy. He toyed with the idea of a writing career, even during a stint in the Navy, where he entered the journalism program at the Defense Information School, the learning institution for communication across the Department of Defense. He went on to achieve career success in the business world but says he always felt a pull to the arts, dabbling in music and acting on the side.

In his second book, most of the stories are fictional and have an element of magical realism. The plots are fabricated but some of the characters are based on people he knew.

“You have to write from what you know if it’s going to be effective,” said Feingold. “We don’t grow up in a vacuum. We are molded by our experiences, by the people who raised us, whether we accept it wholly, question it, or outright reject it. I wouldn’t be who I am if it weren’t for my heritage and lineage.”

When inspiration strikes, Feingold will often write the stories in his head before putting them down on paper. He wrote one story in the parking lot of the South Walpole Post Office, using the Notes app on his phone.

“Writing for me is play, and I suspect that’s true about creativity for a lot of people,” he said. “To make it work really well you have to be in a playful mind set. That’s what I’m waiting for before I write.”

Feingold’s third book, “A Fine Madness and other Mad Stories,” comes out in November. Is it a coda for his writing career? Not likely, because it seems he still has a lot to say. The older one gets, the need to put a life in context seems to become more urgent.

“I think it would have been sad if I ended up on my deathbed, never having written something, but now I don’t have to worry about that,” he said, laughing. “Maybe I just didn’t have enough to write about before now. Maybe I wasn’t ready, or I was conveniently forgetting how important it was to me. Or maybe it took this long to get to the point where I could write about some of these memories and people. And I now think, this is what I was meant to do.”

For more information about Feingold and his books, visit his website: jeffreymfeingold.com.