The newest books — by Jewish authors, about Jewish subjects or of interest to Jewish readers. FICTION 'Inside Out A Memoir Of The Blacklist' The Man In The Box By Thomas Moran; Riverhead Books; $21.95. By Walter Bernstein; Knopf,' $24. T he next time you visit the dancy of Sen. Joe McCarthy local video emporium, made such distinctions irrele- rent The Front, a 1976 vant. film of the Hollywood One of the earliest victims of blacklisting of the 1950s, star- the blacklist, Bernstein (like ring Woody Allen and Zero Mos- many others) entered a shadow tel. As the final credits roll, world of aliases and you'll discover that the "fronts," channeling his director, the principal work anonymously like REVIEW supporting players and a spy in enemy territo- the screenwriter of the film ry. He witnessed the slow all were blacklisted themselves destruction of promising ca- during the 1950s. reers, the friendly and un- Walter Bernstein, the author friendly testimony of colleagues of that screenplay, has now before congressional commit- penned a memoir that brings tees, and the painfully gradual those years of fear vividly to life. process whereby the country ex- Written in a staccato style orcised itself from self-induced that weaves memory and in- paranoia. sight together like a tapestry, Inside Out is remarkably free of rancor or regret. Bern- stein recounts his boy- hood in Brooklyn and the early love affair that ensued between himself and the movies. His family, a tightly knit and abra- sive ensemble of Jew- ish immigrants, also gave him the dual legacy of hard work and political con- sciousness that would shape the subsequent course of his writing career. That career found him, after military service in World War II, working in Holly- wood. The war and the economic depres- sion that had preced- ed it had made social relevance acceptable in the context of the cinema. Many writers and directors, shaped by the history of their times, embraced an emphatic (if some- what nebulous) faith in the liberalism of leftist politics. Some were Communists; some were not. By the early '50s, it didn't matter. The Cold War and the rising ascen- That last development is worth emphasizing. Bernstein makes a point of stating that there never was a single, com- prehensive tally of names that was "the blacklist." The black- list went from being a noun to a metaphor almost. overnight. Only the fiction of George Or- well offers up a more telling por- trait of pervasive fear. That an individual prevailed through such times, remaining true to his own personal vision as a writer and a citizen, is a compelling enough reason to read the book. In this debut novel, Moran tells of a Jewish doctor in 1943 who flees Innsbruck to a Ty- rolean village. The father of a boy whose life he once saved now insists on hiding him, and the doctor develops a "friendship" with the boy and his best friend (a blind girl). As New York Times reviewer Lee Siegel says, "At- tached to every instance of al- truism, bound up with every amiable or affectionate or ro- mantic impulse in this novel, are the beasts of prejudice and self- gratification. LEONARD mainly of Grunberg's own ad- ventures prowling the seedy un- derworld of Amsterdam. The Stories Of David Bergel- son: Yiddish Short Fiction From Russia By David Bergelson; Syracuse Univ. Press; $34.951 cloth; $14.95/paper. Aharon Appelfeld has called Bergelson "the most important Yiddish writer, following the three classical authors who es- tablished modern Yiddish liter- ature: Mendele Mocher Sforim, I.L. Peretz and Sholem Ale- ichem." This new volume con- tains two short stories and one novella from the early period of the author who, born to a Cha- sidic family in the Ukraine, perished GARMENT in a prison camp in 1952. — Robert del Valle Robert del Valle leads Borders' Jewish Book Blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Walter Bernstein has written a memoir of that period in Inside Out. Group. NONFICTION Castles Burning: A Child's Life In War By Magda Denes; W.W. Boron; $24. When Denes was 5, in 1939, her father, a Jewish publisher of anti- Nazi articles, fled Budapest to New York, abandoning herself, her mother and her brother. Castles Burning is the story of her family in hiding and escape, dealing with the war, their abandonment and the results on their spirits. My Journey from Brooklyn, Jazz, and Wall Street to Nixon's White House, Watergate, and Beyond... Crazy Rhythm is Leonard Garment's memoir of his career —from Brooklyn jazz musician to White House adviser. The Here And Now By Robert Cohen; Scribner Pa- perback; $11. A half-Jewish man befriends a Chasidic man and his wife. Humor pervades as the charac- ter's uncommitted life is affect- ed by each one in different ways. Blue Mondays By Arnon Grunberg; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $22. Written on a dare, Blue Mon- days was first published in 1994, when Grunberg was 22, and went on to sell over 70,000 copies in its native Netherlands. It tells The Shadow Man By Mary Gordon; Random House; $24. Gordon's father was a Jew who converted to Catholicism and embraced his new religion with fervor; her mother came from an anti-Semitic Italian Catholic family. In Shadow Man, Gordon explores her spir- ituality and roots. Crazy Rhythm: My Journey From Brooklyn, Jazz, And Wall Street To Nixon's White House, Watergate, And Be- yond ... By Leonard Garment; Random House; $27.50. .