On The Bookshelf
Exiles And Exports
Former Detroiter chronicles the loves, losses and
dreams of the denizens of post-Communist Prague.
oppressed masses while feeling the tug of
her comfortable stateside upbringing.
All of the self-searching souls who peo-
ple these stories are forced to confront
f Prague is a city of fairytale-like
themselves when the ethnic, religious,
images, its citizens, especially its
political and sexual labels they used to
post-Communist-era, young
rely on prove surprisingly less stable than
adults, command a multidimen-
they'd imagined.
sional presence that resonates much
"I didn't set out to write about
more deeply than happily-ever-after.
Prague," says Hamburger. "My plan had
In his book The View from Stalin's
been to do a series of stories about
Head (Random House Trade Paperback
Americans in Europe, but the stories
Original; $12.95), Oak Park and West
kept setting themselves in Prague, so I
Bloomfield native Aaron Hamburger,
followed them there. I'd had in mind a
30, juxtaposes Prague's coming-of-age
sort of update on Henry James' classic
mentality in the 1990s against the
theme of naive Americans bumbling off
American expatriate experience in the
to Europe to become 'finished,' and in
city's extraordinary
the process getting
surroundings.
manipulated by their
Hamburger's short-
AARON HAMBURGER
worldly European
story collection, set
counterparts."
against this post-Cold THE VIEW FROM STALIN'S HEAD
He found, however,
War backdrop, con-
sophisticated, hard-
jures an arresting array
working Americans
of characters: a self-
thrust into a society
appointed rabbi who
that had been set on
runs a synagogue for
its head, and he
non-Jews; an artist,
focused on the con-
once branded as a
trasts of people search-
criminal by the
ing for identity in a
Communist regime,
who hires a teenage
country searching for
boy to boss him
the same.
around; and a fiery
Hamburger lives in
New York City, teaches
would-be socialist try-
in Brooklyn and is
ing to rouse the
LINDA BACHRACK
JN Platinum Associate Editor
I
.
Love. Yourself
Humorist weighs in with "Fat Girl's Guide,"
a funny, anti-self-help memoir.
CARLA SCHWARTZ
IN Platinum Editor
endy Shanker is proud to
be fat, and she's broadcast-
ing it via her newly pub-
lished book, The Fat Girl's Guide to
Life (Bloomsbury, $23.95). Shanker,
formerly of West Bloomfield and an
Andover High School and University
of Michigan graduate, writes a hilari-
ous account of living the fat life with-
out apology.
W
5/ 7
2004
52
She begins her odyssey with her
Jewish roots. "We probably inherited
all of this fat because we were
Ashenkenazi Jews, and we landed in
the harsh terrain of the Russian Pale
of Settlement, where you had to
defend yourself against brutal winters
With lots of insulation."
She continues her saga packing on
pounds at college, and attempting to
diet. She tries all the usual diet pro-
grams — Weight Watchers and Jenny
working on his first novel, set in
Jerusalem.
"It's about a middle-aged Jewish
housewife with a rebellious gay son who
overdoses on a combo of vodka and pills.
To cure his wayward lifestyle, she takes
him on a mission to the Holy Land, _
where she and her son fall in love and
get into trouble. It's a comic novel," he
says:
The grandson of immigrants from a
Belarus shtetl called David-Horodock,
Hamburger attended Hebrew school at
Congregation Shaarey Zedek and went
to Hillel Day School of Metropolitan
Detroit before earning degrees at the
University of Michigan and Columbia
University.
Though he doesn't consider himself a
"Jewish" writer, and rejects all such cate-
gorical labels, he does bring to bear his
"collective experience of identity" - in his
stories.
Hamburger spoke to the Jewish News
about some of his experiences as a gay,
American Jew in Prague.
JN: Why Prague?
AH: Prague affected me more than I'd
realized, and I- knew I had something to
say about my experience living there. I
wanted to write about the meeting of
history and personal life, the moments
when the two rub off on each other.
JN: Did you feel less burdened by labels
there?
AH: In Prague, I actually felt more
Jewish and American than I had in the
States. I felt more Jewish because the
country was so un-Jewish, though at the
same time there was this important
Jewish presence there because of all the
Craig included. She even enrolls at
the William Beaumont Obesity
Clinic, and pops "diet pills" that. are
now deemed dangerous.
Shanker, 32, gives us insight into
a hard-core, no-nonsense diet pro-
gram — from the Duke Diet &
Fitness Center in North Carolina.
Her day-by-day account in this lock-
down facility leaves her only 2
pounds slimmer and with the vow
never to diet again.
She develops her best strategy — a
positive attitude about her body. She
demands that fat get respect and offers
advice on shopping — buy it in sever-
al colors if it looks good — and sex.
Most importantly, Shanker turns self-
loathing into self-tolerance and how to
navigate in our thin-obsessed world.
old synagogues and museums and the
legacy of Judaism in Prague.
I felt American, again in contrast to
my environment. While I was teaching
or when meeting Czech friends, I came
to realize that American is an identity all
its own, and not just a "non-identity" as
I'd always imagined.
I felt less gay at first because I'd previ-
ously lived in San Francisco where it
seemed impossible to escape all things
gay. Even my local post office was paint-
ed bright pink! For a while, Prague felt
like a nice break from the overwhelming
San Francisco experience, but then I
began to get tired of the lack of a strong
gay presence in Prague.
JN: What was your most profound
image of Prague?
AH: I have two. One is the picturesque
view of the castle on the hill above the
middle of town. I went to check my
email on a street that had a great view of
it, and I'd always look up every morning
to see if the view was clear or hazy. The
other image was of the inflated tiger on
the roof of an Esso station on the way
out of town. It was such a random
image, yet the thing about Prague was
that the West was constantly seeping in
all around.
Oh, and one more image: a billboard
of the composer, Bach, naked, standing
surrounded by 20 mini naked Bachs. It
was encouraging the Czechs to follow
the example of Bach and have lots of
children because their birthrate was
declining. (Apparently he had 20 kids.)
JN: Could you relate one anecdote that
sums up your general feeling of the
mindset of young people in post-