Authors (top to bottom): Boris Fishman, Paul Greenberg and Arthur PhillipsOn November 4, KGB Bar lived up to its name with a reading from Wild East: Stories from the Last Frontier, an anthology of stories that explore the hopes and cynicism of the denizens of post-communist Eastern Europe. The readers—Arthur Phillips, Paul Greenberg and Boris Fishman (who edited the collection)—presented faux accents, Czech spies, tadpoles, rolling clowns, Satan the Caterer and Russian toasts.

Paul Greenberg, whose first novel, Leaving Katya, was selected for Barnes and Nobles' Discover Great New Writers series, read from "The Subjunctive Mood" in which a UN bureaucrat moves to Paris with his girlfriend, a clown in training. Returning to Paris from Sarajevo, where two fingers were blown off, he finds clowns rolling on his mattress listening to Daft Punk (a capella accompaniment provided by Mr. Greenberg). "Listen clown," he says to his girlfriend's wine-drinking clown Professor. The Professor, who sounded like Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther, responds "you say clown like it's an insult."

"I'm following Pépé le Peu," Arthur Phillips, the next reader, said before channeling a female Czech spy in his short story, "Wenceslas Square." The spy is a woman with whom the protagonist, a diplomat, has passable sex with while listening to the Beatles in Czech. On his romantic entanglement with a woman he knows is a spy, the diplomat notes, "that there were other realities shrouding this one didn't mean that this one didn't mean anything." Just then, there was a ruckus upstairs due to a theatrical performance all of which Phillips handled with the aplomb of a game-show contestant, "it's the Beaujolais clown," he said smiling. It was difficult not to see in Phillips the Jeopardy champion he once was, standing upright, one hand wrapped around his other wrist, frequently making eye-contact with audience members and rattling off polite self-deprecating jokes. Phillips has also authored several novels, the second of which, The Egyptologist, was a national and international bestseller.

"I have no patience for store-bought dog costumes," one member of the audience said to another during the break. It was, after all, the weekend following Halloween. The other responded, "I was Satan the Caterer."

Boris Fishman, veteran journal born in Minsk, Belarus, read last from his fictional story "The Conversion of the Kaufmans." A young Russian-American man, who upon being sent on assignment to write an article on observing the Sabbath, decides to become a devout Jew, meanwhile being called by his mother, Mother Kaufman, among other things: "cucumber," "porcupine," "tadpole." "eggplant," and "little sausage." When Mother Kaufman says "Die among the Jews, live among the gentiles," Little Kaufman, at first, dutifully obeys his mother, dating a gentile with alabaster legs that wrapped around his neck like "pythons."

"I love to see an author working out his mother issues in public," said Fishman's friend, Steve Zeichek after the reading when Fishman invited the audience members to have some Jack Daniels courtesy of his girlfriend. Over at his table he poured several shot glasses full and passed them around. When the glasses were lifted, Fishman looked at Suzanne Dottino, who didn't have a glass, and said, "in Russia, when someone doesn't have a drink you cheers the nose." And in a spirit that would have made the patrons of any Russian bar proud he lightly toasted her nose with the foot of his glass.

- Rozi Jovanovic