Summer Jackets
POETRY CONT.
FICTION CON'
ends with a section of translations that includes a canto from Mr. Pinsky's award-winning 'The Inferno of Dante."
— Bonni Goldberg
'Odd Mercy'
3:
20
By Gerald Stem
W.W. Norton & Co., 112pgs., $18.95 US.
Gerald Stem's poetry layers images, ideas and memory, filling the reader- with the same sense of awe and indignation with which Mr. Stem himself seems to perceive the activity of the world.
In plain language he pays homage to spirit and intellect through a myriad of references which recall Whitman, Socrates, Krishnamurti and Ezekiel. At the same time, his poems are populated by the familiar: Toyota, Iced Tea, Oliver North.
With its rich, incantatory texture, the rhythms and cadences of Mr. Stern's poetic voice are distinctly Jewish. His work is as deeply personal as it is political. It is informed with the far-reaching perspective that, if one is lucky, comes with age.
In Odd Mercy, Mr. Stern also is intense, self-conscious and constantly reminded of his mortality. He is at his best in the poem "Sixteen Minutes," which begins with the poet observing clouds and turns into a comparison between the Jews and the Irish.
Half of this volume is devoted to a longer work, "Hot Dog." In the tradition of Hart Crane and Frank O'Hara, Mr. Stem elegizes New York City from the vantage point of lower Manhattan. It is an evocative tour in 17 sections that encompasses past and present, interior and exterior. Walt Whitman, St. Augustine and Hot Dog, a street person, are visited and revisited as city and community are scrutinized. In the end, Mr. Stem leaves us with "trees still bare/but starting to turn a little and two or three birdlets/getting ready again for the next eternity."
— BG
ANTHOLOGIES
'Nice
Jewish Girls'
Edited by Marlene Adier Marks
Plume, 282pgs. $12.95 US.
'Growing Up Jewish'
Edited by Jay David
William Morrow, 245pgs. $22 US.
Iice Jewish Girls is a collection of short stories and poetry organized to convey the Jewish experience through women's eyes. Organized in four sections, the stories explore the dif-
see Anthologies cont, next page
ing at the opulent spread, complete with a glazed ham, that the Whites lay out for a Sunday dinner for the two families. "They know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Lily (Lee) White is a strong, likable female character who is not afraid to speak up for herself or for the underdog. Her eventual return to Judaism is naturally complete by the time she introduces her only child, Valerie, to her heritage. Ms. Isaacs once again has written the perfect summer page-turner — a novel that neither insults the reader's intelligence nor requires advanced degrees to follow the plot.
— Melinda Greenberg
'Kraven Images'
By Alan Isler
Bridge Works Publishing Co., $21.95 US.
Iicholas Kraven is the likable, though not admirable, hero of Alan Isler's second novel, Kraven Images. A British-bom Jew who teaches English literature at a college in the Bronx, Kraven is a man who seems always out of context.
Through a series of hilarious misadventures on two continents, the 38-year-old Kraven encounters an aphrodisiac-wielding Brunhilde, a troika of strippers peddling a burlesque version of Hamlet, and several disturbed and vindictive students. Throughout the book Kraven is haunted — and the reader is distracted — by memories of his wartime childhood as well as an assortment of aunts and uncles that is impossible to keep straight.
Why Mr. Isler continually chooses to intermpt the flow of his entertaining narrative with these bleak digressions is unclear until the final pages of the book. Even after several important revelations about Kraven's past, it is difficult to connect them to his troubles as an adult. We are entertained by his encounters, but seldom moved.
The novel has been touted as a satire of academia, but
the humor is so broad it really qualifies as farce. From the titles of Kraven's published works — such as The Womb, the Tomb and the Loom in Shakespeare's Major Tragedies — to the highly improbable convergence of half a dozen separate relationships in London, the author outdoes himself with eacli ensuing plot twist.
Mr. Isler's first book. The Prince of West End Avenue, won rave reviews and the 1994 National Jewish Book Award for fiction; his second is unlikely to fare as well. But despite its shortcomings, Kraven Images is a fast and fun read, filled with vivid description, clever wordplay and unforgettable characters.
— Christine Stutz
*Mona in the Promised Land'
By Gish Jen
Knopf, 304 pgs., $24 US.
The promised land in the title of this second novel is the transparently named Scarshill, N.Y. Like its real-life counterpart, Scarshill cum Scarsdale is a predominantly Jewish suburb in Westchester County, It is now home to the hard-working Changs, Chinese immigrants whose early story was told in Ms. Jen's spirited first novel. Typical American. The Changs have moved to Scarshill for its upscale address and excellent school system. In the process, they seem to have metamorphosed into Westchester's "new Jews — a model minority and Great American success. They know they belong in the promised land."
At the centre of the novel is Mona Chang's conversion to Judaism. Her decision to become a Jew is the spiritual equivalent of cross-dressing and Ms. Jen exploits those humorous effects without sinking into sarcasm or satire. Although ethnicity seems to be malleable in Mona's world, in the end it strengthens personal identity. While studying to become a Jew, Mona's rab-
bi tells her "the more Jewish you become the more Chinese you'll be."
Even her efforts to conceal her new religion fi-om her parents can be regarded as one of the oldest strategies for Jewish survival. On a deeper level Mona layers herself with various ethnicities to accommodate her shifting identities. She becomes "Mona-also-known-as-Ruth, a more or less genuine Catholic Chinese Jew."
Ms. Jen, who grew up in Scarsdale, explores the comic underside of a quintessential North American dilemma: the immigrant parent bewildered by the North American child's newfangled ideas. Her work is part of the first wave of Chinese-American writers on the literary scene. It is a place where Gish Jen and her generation can shape soft autobiographical material into the more varied texture of fiction.
— JBF
BIOGRAPHY
'Einstein: A Life'
By Denis Brian
John Wiley & Sons, 509 pgs., $30 US.
Over the years, Albert Einstein's scientific life has been fully documented, but little of his private world has been disclosed. Denis Brian's masterful biography uncovers that personal life and, in the process, offers some overlooked facts.
One such incident is related to Einstein's delayed speech. He spoke very little before the age of three, leading his parents to believe throughout his elementary school years that he was mentally retarded. For all of his intellectual gifts, Einstein was not an arrogant
man and had little tolerance for pomposity. During his time as a university student, this seeming lack of deference offended several of his professors and earned him their reprobation.
By the time he was 26, Einstein had pubhshed five major research papers, one of which included his legendary mathematical expression, of the special theory of relativity, E = mc^ Einstein's other theories overturned Newtonian physics and revolutionized scientific thinking about matter, energy, time and space.
He was also a tireless campaigner for human rights and fervent supporter of Zionism. While not religiously observant, Einstein considered himself a deeply spiritual person. Yet his altruism appears to have been bestowed only upon acquaintances. He was not a warm or supportive father or husband.
Mr. Brian's carefully researched and skillfully drawn portrait of Einstein demonstrates the latter's brilliance as a scientist, but debunks his reputation as the "secular saint" perpetuated by previous biographies.
A caveat for those readers in search of a beach book: this is not light reading. While the author shepherds the reader through Einstein's ideas on quantum theory, the book's more technical passages are slow going.
— Donna Blair Shear