Nathan Englander  Nathan Englander (Barbara Zanon, Getty Images
/ April 13, 2011)  Every journalist's nightmare is the interview
with the subject who responds to questions with one-sentence (or
even one-word) answers. Fortunately, the writer Nathan Englander
— who was in Chicago recently as the inaugural Crown Speaker
Series lecturer at Northwestern University's Crown Family Center
for Jewish Studies — is apparently incapable of brevity. Ask him
a question and he's off to the races, speaking quickly and
comprehensively, each answer a complete essay in itself. A
native of Long Island, N.Y., Englander grew up in an Orthodox
Jewish community in Nassau County, and later lived for a time in
Jerusalem. His Jewish background provides the setting for
virtually all of his fiction, including the short-story
collection "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" (1999), the
novel "The Ministry of Special Cases" (2007) and a second
collection, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,"
published this year. His play, "T