I'm posting within two days of each other? It must be summer!
This year, I took a class called Jewish Lit Live. It was, quite honestly, life changing (no hyperbole here). I got the chance to meet five incredibly awesome , elegant, charming, curious and oh so creative authors: Aryeh Lev Stollman (The Far Euphrates), Nadia Kallman (The Cosmopolitans) , Pearl Abraham (The Romance Reader), Erica Jong (Fear of Flying) and Bel Kaufman (Up the Down Staircase). Jealous? Don't be, I'll share my thoughts!
Aryeh Lev Stollman is, in many ways, a man of contradictions. A brilliant writer and a successful neuroradiologist, he belongs to the realms of both science and art. The author of The Far Euphrates is pensive and articulate just like his protagonist. He is soft-spoken yet vocal, and timid yet self-aware. He is also an openly gay, once orthodox, Jew. Pigeonholing Dr. Stollman into any of these categories, however, would be reducing him to a series of labels; something the author adamantly warns us against. “Labels,” Stollman said, “are okay to orient oneself, but can be misguiding as well. They are actually a little dangerous.”
Stollman is, himself, the best example for his own statement. His inconsistencies appear to be the source of his strength and talent. Because of them, his compassion, knowledge, and perspective permeate throughout his pages. And so, ironically, it is perhaps the author’s unpredictable nature that allows him to create a book brimming with a coalescence of ideas and characters and beliefs and feelings, all as varied as he is. When asked about merging the worlds of literature and medicine, the author replied that his two passions “feed on each other.” Being a doctor adds a layer of compassion to his writing. But being a writer provides him with an understanding as a doctor. Most importantly, there is room only for empathy, never judgment in either field. “You can’t judge your patients. You just have to help them. And you can’t judge your characters,” you just have to write them.
Dr. Stollman provided new perspective for the Jewish Lit Live class. During his evening reading, he asked readers to be wary of assumptions and placing labels on the authors that we read. Assumptions are like the serpent Stollman alludes to in The Far Euphrates, sneaky and at times misleading. Dr. Stollman discussed the reasons why an author might not be keen on being deemed a Jewish American author. If a writer categorizes himself, he narrows his audience. “If you call yourself a Jewish author, then you worry you will only appeal to a Jewish crowd,” Aryeh said adding, that writing “transcends culture.”
When he spoke to our class, Stollman remarked that, because an author is their creator, there is “something about you in all of your characters.” In her New York Times book review, “In a World of Secrets,” Margot Livesey remarks that “The narrator, Alexander, is, like the author, the son of a rabbi.” This is just one of countless similarities between the author and his main character. While Stollman is quick to point out that the book is not a memoir, he does admit that there is certainly an autobiographical nature to the novel. The mere fact that the author chose give his narrator his own Hebrew name, proves this point. However, upon meeting Dr. Stollman, one can discern that, like he said, he is similar, not just to his protagonist, but to almost all of the characters he has created.
When he read from and spoke about his new novel, soon to be published, Stollman discussed the importance of history. “It affects us culturally,” he said. “Culture tries to shape you, but even one individual can change a culture.” When he said this, he was speaking about his newest protagonist, an ancient fourteen-year-old princess. However, he was also unconsciously, speaking about himself. Just by exploring the history of his culture, Stollman provided a new layer and facet of understanding. Livesey writes that “most novels would be content to show how our lives are shaped by history, but this one seems to be after something even larger.” The author of The Far Euphrates asks questions “raised by the Holocaust and its legacy: how we must try to solve for ourselves the riddle of God's existence and cultivate a sense of mercy in an unforgiving age.”
Livesey directs readers’ attentions to an important quote in The Far Euphrates where Alexander’s father remarks that their “ forefathers originally came not from Kana'an, not from an earthly Jerusalem, but from the far Euphrates with its source in Eden...We cannot forget it, or ever find it again.'' Stollman’s book is much like this mystical river. A reader will never find a book quite like it and will certainly never forget it. See for yourselves.
Stay tuned for my reaction to Nadia Kallman's visit!
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