The Threat

Dripping with voice, The Threat is a hilariously relatable story of self-doubt, aging, and frustration. Literary yet accessible, Stein’s story explores what happens when the only way you can live is by feeling like you might die.
"Mr. Melvin Levin, I'm going to kill you."

The Threat tells the darkly comic story of Melvin Levin, a middle-aged man who is dissatisfied with his dull and mediocre life. That is, until he receives a mysterious death threat in the mail. Terrified at first, Levin soon becomes accustomed to the threat—and then, increasingly, delighted with it, thrilled with his newfound importance as a “threatened man.” But as his obsession with maintaining this identity becomes all-consuming, he risks blinding himself to the twin dangers of the threat itself and—perhaps worse—his own deranged mind.
At once absurdist, moving, and savagely funny, The Threat is a timeless parable of the comic lengths to which people go to protect the delusions that validate them.