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M o c ky marries the woman and fathers a half-angel baby.<br />
But when the pogromist Chmielnicki comes to town,<br />
M o c ky decides that “earth was no place to raise a kid,” and<br />
smuggles the baby back to para d i s e . O f c o u r s e , o n c e<br />
touched by this worl d, the child has no hope of staying in<br />
the world to come, and returns to earth as fast as he can –<br />
turning up, as it happens, on the Lower East Side.<br />
Steve Stern’s novel fits so seamlessly into the legacy of<br />
<strong>Yiddish</strong> literature that one almost feels as though one<br />
were reading in tra n s l a t i o n . For those familiar with<br />
<strong>Yiddish</strong> fiction, poetry and drama, the references to every<br />
writer from H. Leyvik to Itsik Manger are as dizzyingly<br />
exciting as the novel’s expert depiction of everything<br />
from 1910s <strong>Yiddish</strong> theater to 1970s counterculture,<br />
along with their respective sentimentalism and nihilism<br />
– and the moral questions raised by each.<br />
Yet there is something very American and particularl y<br />
Southern about his work as wel l , evocative of the great<br />
Southern writers who have also braided together memory<br />
and myth: the haze of old ruins, the lost grandeur of t h e<br />
p a s t, the sense of living in a world populated by ghosts.<br />
S a u l ’s trav els through his prolonged adolescence, i n c l u d i n g<br />
pit stops everywhere from a commune in the Oza rks to<br />
P ra g u e’s <strong>Jewish</strong> quarter under Soviet rule, become a picaresque<br />
tale reminiscent of many an American on-the-road<br />
n o v el , and a haunting suicide at the center of the book<br />
reads more like Faulkner than Pe r e t z. <strong>The</strong> connections<br />
between these worlds comes bra c i n g l y, in surprising overlapping<br />
images and symbols: a painting reappears at unexpected<br />
moments; two young men, g e n e rations apart, l i v e<br />
alone in book-filled rooms where women struggle to break<br />
through the walls of books surrounding the young men’s<br />
h e a r t s ; a treehouse Saul lives in on the commune fuses<br />
eerily with the Tree of L i fe connecting heaven and earth.<br />
What is astounding about Stern’s work is how easily he<br />
intertwines these settings and styles,as though this material<br />
were made to work in tandem. I t’s the kind of p e r fect layering<br />
that has reigned supreme in <strong>Yiddish</strong> literature since<br />
M e n d ele combined medieval <strong>Jewish</strong> legends with Don<br />
Q u i x o t e , and the kind that English readers ra r ely have the<br />
treat of e x p e r i e n c i n g . But it is also the kind of n o v el that<br />
ra r ely comes along at all, especially today: the kind of n o v el<br />
that immerses you deep into a well of legend and then ra i s e s<br />
you up refreshed and cleansed and newly aware of how little<br />
s e p a rates this world from both the prior world and the next.<br />
I f that isn’t the ability to breathe fire and light,what is JR<br />
E XCERPTS <br />
“‘My son, N a c h m a n , as you know,’” she began reading,<br />
her eyes at once starting to wander while her crooke d<br />
fingers brushed over the words like bra i l l e , “‘was reared<br />
in para d i s e…’” Lowering the pages, she informed me,<br />
“This is for us the ideal story”…a wheeze and a burb l e<br />
“…since it don’t matter should I croak before we finish.<br />
Nathan didn’t never finish the writing of it anyw a y.”<br />
T h e n , prey to a sudden considera t i o n , she gazed at me<br />
o p a q u ely over the book, s a y i n g , “So , N e p h e w…w h y<br />
d o n’t you” ( page 38)<br />
“S a c ked from every position he held for an<br />
incompetence that confirmed his worst fe a r s , N a t h a n<br />
succumbed to a crippling despondency. Had fear not<br />
outweighed his desolation, he might have followed the<br />
grimy caftan who invited him to audition for a local<br />
p i c k p o c keting academy. This was his situation when he<br />
d u c ked out of an afternoon rain shower into the<br />
d o o rway of the <strong>Jewish</strong> Daily Fo rw a r d in its new tens<br />
t o ry tower on East Broadway and diffidently peeke d<br />
inside.…Nathan stood on the threshold, too tra n s f i x e d<br />
by the chaos to flee, when a tall, b u s h y - h a i r e d<br />
gentleman in leather suspenders emerged from an<br />
office to hand him a sheaf o f handwritten pages.<br />
‘Ta ke this, m a ch shnel, to the compositor!’<br />
‘What is it’ asked Nathan.<br />
‘Holy writ,’ the man barke d, peering muddy-eyed over<br />
his spectacles at the former shlepper. ‘ I t ’s newspaper<br />
c o p y, what el s e ’<br />
‘But I don’t work here.’<br />
<strong>The</strong> bushy-haired man seemed incapable of g ra s p i n g<br />
the concept. ‘<strong>The</strong>n why are you holding my copy’<br />
Rather than return them, h o w e v e r, Nathan clutched the<br />
pages to his chest and answered experimentally,<br />
‘ Because I need a job’” ( page 45)<br />
“What they schooled us in, in our angelic cheder, w a s<br />
the wisdom we were supposed to impart to unborn<br />
s o u l s . <strong>The</strong>re was a pointlessness to this opera t i o n , s i n c e<br />
why would you fill a vessel with learning in one worl d<br />
only to empty it in another It was a cruel and unusual<br />
p r o c e s s , which made your immortal souls reluctant to<br />
assume their mortality, just as later, h aving fo rg o t t e n<br />
on earth what they’d learned in heav e n , they were<br />
the jewish reader / october 2005 / page 2