Wise Beyond Her Years

Going up the down staircase all these years has clearly kept Bel Kaufman hale and hearty. The author stood resolutely for the duration of her discussion with our Jewish Literature class, then returned in the evening, vibrant as ever, to celebrate the beloved Sholem Aleichem. The Up The Down Staircase author spoke fervently about her years as a teacher, her time as a writer, and the teachings of her grandfather. Yes, she was affectionate, charming and witty, however, even these adjectives seem empty beside her name.  Bel Kaufman is so much more than her amiable demeanor and sunny disposition. She has spent almost one hundred and one years, not merely surviving, but thriving in a harsh world. Kaufman has been triumphant.

Like her grandfather, Bel fought many battles throughout her life; and, like her grandfather, she has faced them with conviction, persistence and a splash of humor. The author told our class that she was turned down time and again because of the book’s unconventional style, yet she clung stubbornly to its epistolary format. Bel said the book would not have been effective had it been laden with description like a classical novel. As the author, she wanted to remain completely absent from her work.  The book “needed to be a speaking novel,” one that could represent the “gobbledygook,” and the “bureaucracy” of the public school system.

Although Bel had commonalities with many of the authors who visited our class, she and Erica Jong seemed most similar. This was not just because both were dressed to the nines and donned large Hollywood glasses (although it is perhaps the reason I began to compare them in the first place.) Rather, it was their fearlessness and use of humor that united the two women. Both Jong and Kaufman explore serious content but do so in a way that compels a reader to laugh. In this way, both women seem to take after Sholem Aleichem.  Kaufman spoke about Aleichem during both the afternoon and evening events. She called him “a great humorist” but noted that his “subjects are not funny at all.” The documentary Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness further illustrated her point. In times sorrow, Aleichem chuckled. He returned time and again to laughter as a means for survival. 

  Bel began her afternoon discussion with our Jewish Lit Live class by asking how many people believed that her book was funny. Most of us raised our hands. “Its not,” she said sternly. “Its actually a very sad book about miscommunication.”  While the message of her book is serious, many passages within Kaufman’s novel are so absurd one has to laugh. This is exactly the point. In her article, At 95, Running Up The Down Staircase, Sandee Brawarsky compares Kaufman and her grandfather simply yet aptly. The author says, “she’s a writer like him, able to combine humor and compassion” (Brawarsky).  When Erica Jong spoke about Fear of Flying, she also discussed this dichotomy. “When people laugh,” Jong had said, “ I hope they will laugh with recognition.” This statement seems appropriate for the work of Kaufman and Aleicham as well. All three authors masterfully demonstrate how humor can overcome adversary.

It’s no wonder Kaufman continued to teach for decades after Up The Down Staircase became a best seller. She still had (and has!) so much to say. Her life is replete with stories, anecdotes and wisdom. Teaching seems to run through her veins. As Brawarsky notes, “she's a great storyteller, sharing tales in her deep voice of an engaging life.” Even now, when she has long since left the hallways of her public school, Kauffman remains a true educator. Teaching was never just an occupation, nor simply the premise for her book, it’s been a facet of Bel’s being entirely. Once Bel passed her exams, she “was teaching for the rest of [her] life.” “When I talk to you now,” Bel said, I’m still teaching.”

In perhaps the most poignant moment of our afternoon discussion, Bel Kaufman spoke about a teacher’s immortality, stating that “a teacher who showed you the way lives on in memory.” Wednesday night’s documentary further emphasized this idea. Aleicham’s stories contained messages about life, family, grief, and poverty. His tales live on, and so, he too remains. Kaufman refers back to her grandfather often. He is a ubiquitous force in her life, just as she claims all good teachers are on their students. 

Book reviewer Garson Kanin states in a quote appearing on the cover of Kaufman’s book, that Staircase is “pertinent useful, charming, important and utterly adorable.” This describes both the work and the author in general. She is so sweet and compelling that it is difficult to find fault with anything she says. And yet, at times I found myself challenging her belief that all it takes to be a truly great teacher is “to care.” While the sentiment is lovely, this idea seemed awfully simplistic. Doesn’t a teacher also need a solid method and the energy to push against an administration?   This does not mean that Kaufman’s advice was unwarranted, however. In fact, there was something deeply gratifying about seeing the idyllic, optimistic Syl Barrett still alive in Bel.

Kaufman, like the previous four authors, detailed the importance of empathy and the need to identify with your characters as a writer. Her compassion springs directly from her own personal experiences. The author discussed one Puerto Rican child who always sat silently in the back of her class , hindered by the language barrier in the room. Of course, Kaufman understood; she too had to adapt to a new language, a new world and a new way of life as a child.  “Been there, done that,” Bel said, smiling.  

Sandee Brawarsky says that Kaufman “has no secrets of longevity; she chalks up her energy and good health to good luck” (Brawarsky). Personally, I think her long life is the result of her persistence. That, and perhaps a bit of selfishness from her readers; those desperate to hang on to the teachings of Kaufman and who refuse to seal the portal to the world of Sholem Aleichem. 

Brawarsky, Sandee. 2006. At 95, running up the down staircase. The New York Jewish

Week, May 05, 2006. http://search.proquest.com/docview/362520146?accountid=11243 (accessed April 24, 2012).

The Library of Congress Celebrates Gwendolyn Brooks!

Gwendolyn Brooks is a woman of brilliant contradictions. On Thursday, June 7^th the Library of Congress celebrated the Pulitzer prize-winning poet’s birthday at an event that seemed to capture the essence of Brooks. Her work was serious but jocular, acerbic but placid. Presenter and poet Kyle Dargan said aptly that she has a magical way of being “dark and funny.” The compelling thing about Brooks’ work, is the way her incongruities thread together into one unyielding knot. In “We Real Cool” the poet manages to both condemn and identify with her subjects. Dargan informed audience members that the she crafted what is considered by many to be her most famous piece, after spotting a crowd of kids in a pool hall and wondering “how they feel about themselves.” In eight short lines the poet has not only created a voice for her subjects and established a smooth, jazzy rhythm, she has also instigated thoughts relating to authority, society and youth.

Poet and children’s librarian Janice Harrington gave profound insights into Brooks’ work and the intention behind it.  “Gwendolyn Brooks was of the mind that we are all each other’s business,” Harrington said. She went on to imply that Brooks’ poetry tries, in many ways, to show the importance of taking care of one another.  From A Street in Bronzeville and Annie Allen to Maud Martha Brooks provides insights into an eclectic group of characters. Her work travels from “the hood” to Beveley Hills and back. Her poems, as Harrington said, “examine the dignity of people,” despite the neighborhood in which they live. With cadence and audacity Gwendolyn Brooks, as Harrington stated, used “her words as instruments of hope.”

Want more on Brooks? Check out Haki R Madhubuti's book:

Honoring Genius Gwendolyn Brooks: The Narrative of Craft, Art, Kindness and Justice

Happy Father's Day!

My FAVORITE dad in literature? 

Mr. Atticus Finch! 

Erica “Fearless” Jong

Erica Jong is described in a 1975 Time Magazine article, as “a pretty, blonde woman with an expansive smile.” The author “is giggly and ebullient, sprinkling her talk alternately with four-letter words and literary allusions.”  This description may have been written thirty-seven years ago, but it is just as apt today.  At first, the author appeared guarded, hidden behind her leather jacket and leopard-print scarf. She even seemed to have a twinge of condescension in her demeanor. However, this proved to be largely my own preconceived notions as, minutes into our discussion, she shed this persona entirely. She peeled off her jacket, removed her scarf and, in the ultimate transformative moment, removed her enormous sunglasses, appearing at once more relaxed and amicable.

Right from the beginning, Erica stood in blatant contrast to the other authors of the semester. With (to quote Jong herself) “dare I say penetrating” humor and guileless remarks, the author’s candor added new dimension to both her own novel and the course in general.  Many of the Jewish Lit Live authors have been charming, yet relatively pensive and introverted. In fact, these characteristics were becoming the status quo for our author visits. With a refreshing, forthright personality, Jong obliterated this trend. She spoke with a certain spark. Her sarcasm and emphatic nature teetered on the brink of hyperbole at times, but Jong ultimately grounded her statements in (at least some version of) reality. 

At times while reading Fear of Flying, I had sided with the Times article which deemed the book “ shapeless” with a “self-indulgent plot” and “too prone to phrases like ‘our mouths melted like liquid.’” I see now that perhaps Jong’s exaggerations and elaborate metaphors do not, like the article implies and like I claimed initially, replace the author’s authenticity. Instead, maybe the flowery, poetic prose mask the truth and challenge the reader to search a bit before they find it. This is similar to the way Jong seems to conduct herself; amidst her one-liners and amusing anecdotes, the author tucked profound insights and ideas.

When Pearl Abraham came to visit, she immediately drew a palpable distinction between herself and the protagonist of The Romance Reader. This was not the case for the Fear of Flying author. Both Jong and her character Isadora Wing are intriguing because of their inconsistencies; they have the ability to be simultaneously sardonic and sweet. Erica, like her protagonist, was a fountain of information. She bubbled with quotes from authors, book trivia, and historical facts. While she was open to every type of question, at times she veered from the subject at hand.  An aside would turn into a story or a simple answer would become a tangent to a more complex subject matter.  It was in these digressions that the Erica would unveil a gem of wisdom. Isadora’s confessions mimicked Jong’s responses. Both found their greatest stories once they swerved from an original path.

Although our class has been warned repeatedly to avoid categorizing an author and her protagonist as one in the same, Jong and Wing came as a unit. At times it seemed like the author had decided to become her book’s protagonist for the purpose of discussing Fear of Flying. The truth, however, is that Isadora and Erica actually are, mostly, one in the same; the lines between them are indelibly blurred. Some authors protest being compared to the characters they create. Erica embraces it, acknowledging that the book is "an interweaving of fiction with reality" (Time).

In the book that Jong openly admits is a “bit of a rant,” Isadora often speaks in melodramatic tones or confronts the sinister themes in life with wit and a touch of absurdity. Despite the subject matter, humor saturates the pages of Fear of Flying. Erica’s ability to be both side-splitting and serious may have been one of the reasons the mock-memoir had such success. It reads as both a ground-breaking and important novel which altered the feminist movement and a comic guilty pleasure.  The reason for this dichotomy is simple; Jong explained that “humor makes the medicine go down.” It allows us to addresses the harsh realities of the world in a way we can stomach. Fear of Flying gives women a way to approach taboo subjects. The important thing, Erica explained, is that when people laugh at the book, “they laugh at it with recognition.”

During the evening event, Erica described her growth as a writer but noted that the main themes in her work have stayed the same from her college years to today. When she read her story Kiss from the Sugar in My Bowl short story anthology, this became immediately apparent. With the same intimate tone seen in Fear of Flying, Jong once again confronted femininity and what the author called the  “psychological games that we play with ourselves and with each other.” She harkened back to the idea of the “zipless fuck,” expressing one woman’s desire to have sex without having to deal with the emotional repercussions.  Sex, fear, passion and inner turmoil, were just as pervasive in Kiss as they had been in her work three decades earlier.

While her advice to budding writers was in many ways similar to the tried and true advice we’ve heard before, her methods were also unique and innovative. When Jong described her work on her current book, she said that at times when she was writing she thought it might be a memoir. At other times she said it seemed like fiction. Sometimes, she believed it would be another Isadora Wing installment. This spoke volumes about Jong’s ability to make fiction and the real world interact.  Erica does not imagine new worlds or create characters out of nothing, as some authors do. Rather, she chooses to examine reality, at times contorting it to her liking. This is a perilous yet inspiring decision because it forces an author to take part in deep self-reflection, something Erica seems to know how to do. “You have to write for yourself” she assured our class, “write about the thing you feel a need to write about.”

"The Loves Of Isadora." Time 105.5 (1975): 93. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 Apr. 2012.

            

Goodbye Ray Bradbury

Yesterday, the world lost another literary giant. A few excerpts from the Huffington Post and Chicago Tribune below. Read the articles  here and here.

During his acceptance speech for an honorary National Book Award in 2000: 

"Everything I've done is a surprise, a wonderful surprise... I sometimes get up at night when I can't sleep and walk down into my library and open one of my books and read a paragraph and say, `My God, did I write that? Did I write that?', because it's still a surprise."--Huffington Post article by By Mallika Rao and Gazelle Emami 

"His gift for storytelling reshaped our culture and expanded our world. But Ray also understood that our imaginations could be used as a tool for better understanding, a vehicle for change, and an expression of our most cherished values."-- --Chicago Tribune article by Carmel Dagan

The Romance Reader and Reading Pearl Abraham

    

      In American Taliban Abraham writes that John Parish “ introduced himself to himself.” In The Romance Reader, Rachel has, in a way, done this as well. As the narrator detaches from her community, as she peels away the layers of religion, marriage and seamed stockings, she begins to gain a true understanding of herself. At the novel’s close, Rachel is on her way to what Abraham calls “Gnosis,” the “deep, internal, imaginative knowing of oneself.” Although Rachel has not yet reached this state at the end of The Romance Reader, her rebellion and determination to find freedom indicate she will get there one day.

The author hopes that all younger generations are given the opportunity to achieve “Gnosis.” She described her fear, saying that we may not get the time we need to reach internal understanding. When the John Walker Lin story first appeared in 2001, Abraham feared that “Gnosis” would no longer be possible. She worried that Lin’s story would keep young adults from setting out on their own and seeking knowledge and power. Abraham turned these reservations and suspicions into fuel for her book, American Taliban.

 Perhaps the author’s conviction and devotion to the idea of “Gnosis” stems from the importance it played in her own life. It seems that to create characters who achieve or will achieve “Gnosis,” a writer must have experienced the phenomenon herself. Abraham has. Her attachment to freedom probably comes from the lack of it that she had as a child.  Stifled by the parameters of her religion, Pearl was emerged in the conventions of her family’s belief system. “In life, we are always emerged in something, but being emerged in anything doesn’t lend itself to self discovery,” Abraham said. She seems to have found “Gnosis” in college, when she had distance from the Jewish community and room for exploration.

In Shoshana Ziblatt’s review, “‘The Romance Reader’ Reveals Dreams, Tensions of a Chassid,” the author states that “Pearl Abraham’s first work of fiction, leaves the reader wondering where the author's identity ends and the main character's begins. And therein lies its success” (Ziblatt). Rachel and Pearl are plagued by the same dilemmas. Both vacillate between family and the desire for freedom. It was surprising that even now, decades later, the tension between the author’s past and present still feels palpable.

Although Pearl outwardly protested the stringencies of the Hasidic community, she also stated that the culture is “not based on corruption but on beliefs.”  In Shoshana Ziblatt’s review,  the author states that Abraham belongs to no “ organized branch of  Judaism, but still feels what she calls the "internal rhythm" of Chassidic culture.” Pearl still clings to the romantics of her religion; “Sunsets on Friday nights mean something to me, certain religious days of the year mean things to me," she said (Ziblatt).

The author approached religion with what seemed to be a newfound practicality.  She discussed religion as fiction, explaining that “it begins with a vision by some leader. If it is true enough, it gets picked up.” She also noted that the founder of Hassidism was a fiction writer himself.  These ideas harkened back to some of Nicole Krauss’ statements. Krauss remarked that God was the greatest created character of all. Abraham also defended religion, stating that modern society tends to blame it too much. She acknowledged that religious convictions can be limiting, but this might not always be the case, “sometimes it is just an easy fault.”

Pearl Abraham’s personality was, perhaps, the greatest surprise this year. Areyah Lev Stollman was soft-spoken and self-aware, just as I would have envisioned an adult version of his protagonist. Nadia Kallman was slightly eccentric but filled with the same enthusiasm that permeated in The Cosmopolitans. Nicole Krauss was careful with her words and spoke in the same lyrical style as The History of Love. Although Pearl had biographical similarities with Rachel, and although both strived for the same goals, their personalities varied significantly. While Abraham has said that "Rachel is impulsive in a way [she] is not” and that she is “not so courageous,” the opposite seemed to be true (Ziblatt). Perhaps it came with life experience, but Abrahm seemed devoid of  insecurities and comfortable with her place in the modern world.

It has become abundantly clear that compassion is one of the most important qualities a writer can have. Stollman stated that the empathy he uses with his patients translates in his writing as well. Kallman said that her own similarities with her characters allow her to write with a deeper understanding. Krauss remarked that writing is the road she takes to empathy, which leads to better writing. Abraham would probably agree with all three. She believes that an author must “have a kind of love and understanding for every character she creates.” Rachel’s mother is a fierce, strong woman trapped in a Patriarchal society. Pearl said that as a writer, she loved writing the mother’s character the most. She was an antagonist for Rachel, but she suffered too.

At one point in the evening, Abraham quoted her mentor E.L. Doctorow, who said that a writer “ knows best when he knows the least.” I believe this true. However, Abraham’s The Romance Reader seems to negate this idea. Pearl’s novel is compelling, poignant and ultimately successful but didn’t she use the what she new and had lived to create her story?

Ziblatt, Shoshana. "’The Romance Reader’Reveals Dreams, Tensions, of a Chassid." The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California (1995): 1-3. ProQuest. Web.