[2] He was 14 years old when his parents hid him in a small stairway landing closet as Gestapo arrived at the family home in Nazi-occupied France.

He was promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor in 1990, and in 1992, appointed to the Melodia E. Jones Chair of Literature, where he served until retiring in July 1999.

[6] Federman died of cancer at the age of 81 in San Diego, California,[1] and in May 2010, his final new English novel was released by Starcherone Press: SHHH: The Story of a Childhood, edited and with an introduction from writer Davis Schneiderman, who also made a 2007 YouTube video with Federman and author Lidia Yuknavitch, in which the three boil books in noodles.

For example, reviewing The Twofold Vibration in Newsday, Melvin J. Friedman wrote:Federman is a very gifted storyteller who prefers a circular to a linear design, who comes down on the side of verbal exuberance rather than spareness ...

Despite the eccentricities of telling, of composition, and even of typography and punctuation, [the novel] seems part of the leisurely picaresque tradition; it confronts contemporary issues and involves itself in the history of literature and thought ... Federman’s methods surely take some getting used to.

[7]Reviewing the same novel in The Chicago Tribune, Welch D. Everman wrote:"The Twofold Vibration" proves what readers of his earlier novels "Double or Nothing," "Take It or Leave It" and "The Voice in the Closet" have known for some time: that Raymond Federman is a brilliantly talented fictioneer who can tell stories that are entertaining, funny and wildly imaginative yet always profound and deeply moving ... Federman is an optimist, a lover of life, language and laughter.

[8]Several full-length books have been written about his work, including a 400-page casebook entitled Federman From A to X-X-X-X by Larry McCaffery, Thomas Hartl and Doug Rice.