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and amusement rides, he is the self-
proclaimed mayor of the "Little City."
Our romp begins when he gives asy-
lum to Kid Twist after the Kid saves a
young boy from being killed as sport
by Gyp the Blood.
From their home, a tin hotel
shaped like a giant circus elephant,
the Trick and Kid introduce us to a
desperate cast of characters. Kid falls
in love with Esther Abromowitz, a
rabbi's daughter and seamstress at the
ill-fated Triangle Shirt Factory, while
Trick obsesses with Mad Carlotta, a a-
foot-tall temptress who assists an
inept magician in the carnival.
In their struggle to survive the
vicious and precarious encounters pre-
sented in their daily lives, we are privy
to the inner workings of Tammany
Hall, the fight for labor reforms, the
criminal underworld, prostitution and
the first visit to America by Sigmund
Freud and his protege Carl Jung. In
this bizarre world, the instinct to sur-
vive and the hopeful quest for love
and acceptance bind all that enter it
The only questionable subplot in
the novel is the presence of Freud and
Jung. Their conversations analyzing
the psyche of man, though interesting,
aren't necessary. Nevertheless, this is an
epic novel marrying Kevin Baker's
masterful writing skill and knowledge
of history to a fantastic tale.
— Reviewed by Deborah Walike
The Loves of Judith by Meir Shalev,
translated from the Hebrew by Barbara
Harshav (Ecco Press; 315 pp.; $25.00)
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Set in Palestine just after the
Second World War, The Loves of
Judith chronicles the travails of the
young but emotionally damaged
Judith. We meet her as she arrives in a
small village in the Jezreel Valley to
keep house for a recently widowed
farmer. She soon becomes the focus of
love for three men: Moshe
Rabinovitch is the farmer for whom
she works; Jacob Sheinfeld is the out-
wardly silly but philosophically sage
neighbor who sacrifices his exquisitely
beautiful wife for her; and
Globerman, is the cattle dealer who,
despite his coarseness, knows how to
please Judith with grappa and petits
fours.
Zayde, Judith's curiously named
young son, narrates the novel with her
three admirers. Because Judith never
reveals the identity of Zayde's father,
members of the trio participate in the
child's upbringing. Though Zayde is
JUDITH BOLTON - FASMAN
Special to the Jewish News
E
ileen Pollack grew up in
Liberty, N.Y., a town in
the heart of the Catskills,
where her grandparents
owned a small hotel. The author has
directed the undergraduate creative
writing program at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor for the past
five years and will be an assistant
professor in the Master of Fine Arts
program there in the fall.
Although her new novel, Paradise,
New York (Temple University Press;
251 pp.; $27.95), is loosely based on
memories of her childhood, Pollack
noted in a recent interview that her
own autobiography is not inter-
changeable with the fictional events
of her novel.
"The setting is autobiographical. I
dream of walking through [my
grandparents'] hotel in intense detail.
Physically the Garden of Eden Hotel
in the book is our hotel down to the
details of the service there," she says.
The book's protagonist, Lucy
Appelbaum, starts out as a frivolous
9-year-old who spends her days frol-
icking at the family hotel. By the end
of Paradise, she is a serious 19-year-
old who has dropped out of college
to save her legacy. On her journey,
she confronts her self-loathing broth-
er, a destructive grandmother, a
frisky Irish-Catholic insurance
adjuster and her love for the hotel's
black handyman.
,
But that is only a hint of the energy
running through this novel rich with
imagery and allusions. Lucy's surname
translates as apple tree. Such are the
particular pleasures that illuminate the
weightier themes of loss, identity,
memory and nostalgia in this work.
Pollack observes that "when the
middle-class Jewish community out-
The Author
U-M Professor
Eileen Pollack is out
with her first novel,
"Paradise, New York."
idiosyncratic and quirky congrega-
tion in which she grew up in Liberty.
The story was recently anthologized
in a volume of fiction called God:
Stories, edited by C. Michael Curtis,
fiction editor of the Atlantic. Monthly.
"I attended junior congregation
and Hebrew school. I read Hebrew
but was not always sure what it
meant," says Pollack. It's a familiar
quandary for many American Jews.
However, in the hands of a gifted
writer like Pollack, the dilemma
inspired her to "filter [my writing]
through the lens of who I am and
where I grew up.
"Being Jewish is a big part of who
I am and I don't mind being called a
Jewish writer. What I object to is
when publishers want to appeal to
Jewish readers only."
To pigeonhole Pollack is to gloss
over a growing body of work that in
many regards is beyond fact and fic-
tion. In this novel, where the
Catskills are both landscape and
metaphor, sentiment and memory
give way to authenticity. The book
grew the Catskills, it became
important to figure out what parts
of the experience were meaningful
and what was simply nostalgic."
The author similarly conveys
the distinction between what was
significant in the Jewish
American experience in the
Eileen Pollack
Catskills and what was more sen-
timental about it in her first book, a
is about something that once existed
striking collection of short stories
and doesn't anymore. And to that
called The Rabbi in the Attic.
end," says Eileen Pollack, "nothing
In the title story she conjures the
will replace the Catskills." 1-1
When the Catskills' legendary Concord Hotel finally
closed its doors last winter, it was an indication that
what was lost would never be recovered. The spirit of
the region was sapped; the Catskills was transformed
into yet another northeast region bereft of its liveli-
hood. All that remained was a bittersweet nostalgia
hovering over the unemployment lines and the husks of
once vibrant hotels — large and small — littering the
countryside.
For the reader who enjoys nonfiction, Catskill Culture:
A Mountain Rat's Memories of the Great Jewish Resort
Area, by Phil Brown (Temple University Press; 312 pp.;
$34.95), recounts the life of guests, staff resort owners,
entertainers and local residents through the author's mem-
ories, archival research and the memories of 120 others. A
professor of sociology at Brown University, Brown chroni-
cles the life of the Borscht Belt from its early years before
World War II through its heyday in the postwar era and
its subsequent decline.
Says fellow "mountain rat" Eileen Pollack: "Phil Brown
has written a book that avoids the sentimentality and con-
descension that have marred many of its predecessors.
[His] voice is so warm, rich and good natured ... you will
feel as if you are in the care of the most gracious of hosts."
6/25
1999
Detroit Jewish News
79