“Assimilation” Satirizes Dueling American Dreams—at Word for Word
Doctorow’s & Tolstaya’s Russian Love Stories Hit Comedy Gold by Mary Lou Herlihy “Assimilation,” two short stories about outsiders buying into the American Dream, leaves us wanting more. In E.L. Doctorow’s “Assimilation,” menacing Russian mobsters in Brooklyn mark the wrong man for a green-card marriage scam. In Tatyana Tolstaya’s “Smoke and Shadows,” a mysterious…