Book excerpt: Mnemes 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 Mnemes, 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 familymother, father, sisterand the Isaacsons, his mothers 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.