54 Friday, June; 22, 1984 THE, DETROIT JEWISH NEWS f 1 _.aiiirgli 1 cY*1.4K.V, i COME EARLY! When cultures collide lali.c.1 4 ' Continued from Page 41 For the best selection from our "exciting" collection of selected spring fashions! • LINGERIE • DRESSES • PANTS • SUITS • BLOUSES • SWEATERS • HANDBAGS SUPER SUMMER SPECIAL! Silk Camp Shirt Were $48 ONLY $ 22 HOURS: Monday thru Saturday, 10-5 29229 Northwestern, Southfield 355-4770 Ab1{910 1919 BY CIA AWARDED CF ttsi GRADING B t VAl tiAtION aMOLOGisvolAmONTOLOGiSt Daily til 5:30 Thurs. tIl 8:30 Sat. tIl 5:00 "Retail courtesies at Wholesale tikes" Phone: 642-5575 .30400 Telegraph Rd. Birmingham. Suite 104/134 MI 48010 [W) Holocaust head-on yet because I feel pose as a novelist is to present my world as honestly and fairly as I can. thoroughly inadequate to the task. "Indeed, very often when you do First of all, I didn't experience it and I that sort of thing, the picture you don't know what moral right I have to present is not a picture that some tackle something I did not experience people like. And so you get attacked — especially something of that awe- for it as I have been over and over some dimension. again, especially by some of the "What I've done this far with the Jewish fundamentalist press in the Holocaust is to tackle the American United States and in Israel. But side of it — that is to say how it led to that's to be expected. All that means the creation of the State of Israel — is that you're doing your job right. In as I did in The Chosen, and the effect other words, you're not doing public of the destruction of an entire Euro- relations. A novelist is not in the job' pean branch of an American family Of public relations. as I did In The Beginning. But I'm "I don't see myself as functioning going to tackle it head-on in the next in any way differently from any book." novelist who is serious about writing Has Potok noticed the recent and who isn't just interested in tel- proliferation of Holocaust memorial ling a story. There's nothing wrong centers across the nation and what with telling a good story, it's just that does he think of them? "It's not atypi- I want to do that and something more cal," he replies. "If Polish Jewry had with a novel. I'm like any other been more stable, they would have writer who chooses a world for him- done something like this in the gen- self or herself and explores that eration after the first pogroms. We're world. but in order to make the just doing it in an American style. reader fully interested in knowing That is to say big, showy, noisy and about that world, you have to write visible. And my feeling is that it is about it with a measure of passion. absolutely the right thing to do. Be- And I certainly have that about my cause if we don't do it, the world world." wants nothing more than to forget The good news for Potok's many the Holocaust as quickly as possible. fans is that he's just finished writing "The world is very good at forget- a new book. "It's about a mother and ting destructions, and the Jew is very a daughter," he explains, "and it's good at remembering them. And the due out this winter 'from Knopf. The only one who has a moral right to title is Davita's Harp, and it is set in make a judgment on whether the the years between 1936 and 1942. Holocaust will be remembered or for- "I'm also hoping to write a gotten is the Jew, because he paid the Jerusalem novel," Potok adds. price. And the Jew will not forget. "That's one of the things that I really "I hate the subject (the hope to do with my life. I think I may Holocaust). I hate talking to my chil- start this book with the Sinai War of . dren about it. But we have to keep it 1973 and may take it up to the pre- alive. That much we owe the dead. sent day. It's one of the things that's That's our Kaddish for all those dead. perking around in the back of my "People hate it. I hate it. But we head. still have to keep it alive. Just be- "And after that, well, I may do a ' cause it is horrible and nightmarish continuation of the Davita book. And doesn't mean we should forget it. there's something else I want to do There are certain nightmares we with Asher Lev. I have some ideas I should remember. We should re- want to play around with, and I'm not member what we're capable of as a sure yet which one will take me in species. It's a legitimate subject for hand." nightmares." Where does Potok intend to take As a Jewish writer, what does Asher Lev in his sequel? "I want him Potok think of other contemporary to go on the quest that he promises American novelists who often write himself at the end of the book," re- about Jews and Jewish themes? For plies Potok. "He will try to discover instance, Philip Roth? Potok believes new forms — Jewish forms — and he that the world of these novelists "is will attempt to create an aesthetic essentially the world of individuals motif for the Holocaust because no- who are peripheral not only to body knows what to do with it in Judaism but to the general culture in Western art. And that's all I know at which we live. this point. That's all I need to get a "Individuals like those you find novel started — a central idea. I just in the early stories of Philip Roth are let it sit inside of me and sort of bub- essentially those who are not very ble. The idea quietly perks, and then familiar with things Jewish or secu- when the time is right, it starts wak- lar. And when you get a mix of this ing me up very early in the morning. kind, you will almost always get vul- And I get fidgety. I know that I've got garities. It's certainly a legitimate to start writing it. Although I can world to explore — and it's certainly describe the process to you, I don't a very large world. There are lots of understand it to this day. And I've people like that. And much of con- written a lot of books already. I just temporary fiction concentrates upon go with it. that kind of person — a person who "I'm going to take the continua- can't quite find his or her place any- tion of the Davita story through the where. Holocaust. I have not tackled the "Even Madame Bovary was that