arts & entertainment

Author Eileen Pollack

has written about the
militia movement for
the New York Times.

The
Ambiguities
Of Modern Life

U-M professor writes novel, partially
set in rural Michigan, about an America
divided by religion, sexuality and fear.

Suzanne Chessler

ened," says Pollack, currently seeking pub-
lication of an autobiography explaining
her unusual professional path.
"That gave me inspiration for the plot,
ileen Pollack moved to Ann Arbor
shortly before the 1995 Oklahoma and I started doing research on the mili-
City federal building was bombed tias. I didn't want to make anybody into
a caricature. I also didn't want to make
by Timothy McVeigh, the American-born
terrorist with ties to the militia movement the book about liberals coming to rural
Michigan and satirizing the people living
in Michigan.
there.
Around the same time, she was told of
"When I started writing the
anti-Semitic incidents experienced by
book, nobody outside the state
friends relocated to a small
believed me that you could
town in the state she
have a school where the biol-
gradually was getting
ogy teacher is a creation-
to know.
ist or where people still
Pollack, fiction
thought that Jews came
author and director of a
here in spaceships:'
master's creative writing
Passion and paranoia
program at the University
are the core emotions
of Michigan, morphed
that fuel the story,
what she was learning
which also explores
about area hate groups into
reactions to homo-
a new novel, Breaking and
sexuality and AIDS.
Entering (Four Way Books),
"I'm interested in
which will be published on
domestic
passion
Jan. 10.
and
passion
for
one's
work,
Her main characters, Louise
political
beliefs
and
religion:'
she
says.
and Richard Shapiro, move
"When
is
it
a
good
thing,
and
when
is
it
to small-town Michigan from
destructive?
California. With their young daughter,
"I'm also interested in the way paranoia
Molly, they are trying to leave tragic events
feeds on itself. Paranoia and hatred can
behind and restart their lives as a family.
ricochet around a community, and it's
As Louise looks for a job as a school
hard to know who is going to get hurt. It
social worker, and Richard begins work
as a prison psychologist, they meet neigh- can end up being someone who's inno-
cent:'
bors who view government as the enemy,
Pollack, who grew up in a "nominally
cope with infidelity and react to prejudi-
Orthodox" household around the Catskills
cial acts that cause personal upheaval.
in New York, usually includes Jewish
The larger issues of the novel have to
characters in her award-winning work
do with ideological divisions in America
although she thinks of them as represent-
and will be discussed by the author
ing singular versions of quandaries that
Wednesday evening, Jan. 18, at Nicola's
anybody could have.
Books in Ann Arbor. Another program,
In her novella The Rabbi in the Attic, she
April 4, will open the discussion of
tells
about an Orthodox religious leader
right-wing extremist groups with input
fired
for harassing people to be more
from JoEllen Vinyard, author of Right in
observant.
The man refuses to move out
Michigan's Grassroots.
of
the
house
provided by the congregation,
"It was on my mind that I landed in
and another rabbi is told he can have the
the middle of something I knew nothing
job by getting his predecessor to leave.
about, and I became curious and fright-

Contributing Writer

"Paranoia ant. paired
can ricochet at=t5und
(1 community, and
it's hard to know wh
is going to get hurt'
says the author.

E

"The story seems very Jewish, but it's
really about anybody who grows up in
a tradition that's stifling in some way;'
Pollack explains.
While Pollack, 55, wrote a lot while she
was quite young, she loved science and
math and made them her priority after
high school.
She worked on those subjects all
through college but was the only woman
majoring in them at Yale University, she
says. "That was a lot of pressure.
"I took a creative writing class with
John Hersey (Hiroshima, The Wall) and
walked away from my original majors
when I got a Marshall Scholarship to study
literature and philosophy in England.
"After I came home, I got a job as a
journalist. My first love was fiction so I
went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop to
get a master's degree. I taught in Boston
before Ann Arbor."
Pollack, the divorced mother of a son
studying history at the University of
Chicago, has particularly enjoyed teaching
the course Jewish Comic Fiction. Tennis
serves as her recreation.
"Breaking and Entering is a lot more
serious than my other work:' says Pollack,
who has written about the militia move-
ment for the New York Times.
"When I was doing my research for the
book, I started hanging around places
where the militia met and reading militia
literature.

"There are groups that meet near Ann
Arbor that are more socialized, and they
have events where they invite people to
see what the militia is all about. They want
members:'
Pollack remembers an incident illustrat-
ing the way research for the book made
her aware of how close the militia can be:
"I read a nonfiction book about the
Christian Identity Movement, very extrem-
ist and racist as founded by someone born
Jewish and converted. Members believed
they were the original sons of Adam while
the Jews and blacks were not.
"I was planning my son's bar mitzvah
so I had to go to Zingerman's to pick the
food we would have after the service. I put
down the book and drove about a mile
before stopping at a traffic light.
"I looked at the car in front of me and
saw a bumper sticker that said, 'I am an
original son of Adam; one of the mottos
of that group. If I hadn't read the book, the
bumper sticker would have been mean-
ingless to me:'

Eileen Pollack will discuss Breaking
and Entering 7 p.m. Wednesday,

Jan.18, at Nicola's Books, Westgate
Shopping Center, 2513 Jackson
Road, Ann Arbor. (734) 662-0600;
www.nicolasbooks.com .
For information on the April 4
event, go to www.eileenpollack.com
closer to the date.

iN

January 5 • 2012

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