A •W •E •S •0 •IVI •E
Three memoirs prove once again that a writer's own story is often the most interesting.
In Love With Language
Spare, Haunting Prose
mos Oz is arguably Israel's leading writer.
His best-selling novels include My Michael,
To Know a Woman, and Black Box. In addi-
tion, he has, as a political activist, written some 450
articles, many of them in support of the Peace Now
movement.
Not surprisingly, he has for some time been a con-
troversial figure, both in Israel and abroad. All of
which makes A Tale of Love and Darkness (Harcourt;
$26), his thick book of memoir translated from the
Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange, so intriguing.
Language is at the center of Oz's ruminations. "I
was powerfully drawn," Oz recounts at one point, to
"the solemn idioms, the almost forgotten words, the
exotic syntax and the linguistic byways ... and the
poignant beauty of the Hebrew language."
As a child, Oz grew up in a small apartment
crowded with books in 12 languages and relatives
who spoke nearly as many. Both his parents were
passionately bookish souls (his father worked as a
librarian, always lugging home three or four weighty
A
he Story of a Life (Schocken Books; $23) is a
work of memoir rather than a systematic
autobiography and, as such, it does not
unfold chronologically nor does it ask a series of
questions and proceed to answer them.
Rather, Aharon Appelfeld's book, translated from
the Hebrew by Aloma Halter, is a collection of
vignettes, each one usually four to six pages in
length, that take him from his idyllic pre-war child-
hood in Romania through his Holocaust experi-
ences, his wandering after the war and the life he
made for himself as a Hebrew writer in Israel.
Best known to American readers for Badenheim,
1939, a work that follows a group of Jews on vaca-
tion who are oblivious to the portents of imminent
destruction all around them, Appelfeld tends to
write about the world before — or after — the con-
centration camps.
An author of some 20 books of poetry, stories,
novels and essays, the Holocaust remains his con-
stant subject. But, so far as Appelfeld is concerned,
he first volume of Bob Dylan's ornery autobi-
ography is a fascinating, maddening, time-trav-
el ride.
Though oddly structured and lacking context, the
book's easy, conversational style still makes Chronicles:
Volume One (Simon & Shuster; $24) engaging. In the
end, it's easy enough to forgive its jumpy chronology
and to excuse how much Dylan leaves unexplained —
including his personal take on being Jewish.
Ambiguity and mystery, so potent here, have long
been key to Dylan's mojo.
Chronicles stresses Dylan's life in New York in the
early 1960s and highlights New Morning, a 1970
album, and Oh Mercy, a 1989 disk that Daniel Lanois
produced. It touches winningly, if fleetingly, on Dylan's
early years in Minnesota's Iron Range and artfully
weaves the artistic and the historical.
Explaining "Everything Is Broken," an Oh Mercy
tune, Dylan writes, "Danny didn't have to swamp it up
too much; it was already swamped up pretty good
when it came to him. Critics usually didn't like a song
IN LOVE WITH LANGUAGE on page 42
SPARE, HAUNTING PROSE on page 42
ORNERY BUT NEVER ORDINARY on page 43
T
Ornery But Never Ordinary
T
1/ 7
2005
39