delphipsmith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
delphipsmith) wrote2009-11-11 10:47 pm
delphipsmith) wrote2009-11-11 10:47 pm
Entry tags:
:: Kafka, Jews and teeth
OK, Kafka was a Jew, so technically the first two terms are redundant. But I don't much care at this point. I've fallen rather far behind in getting down my thoughts about what I've read due to various real life interferences (conference travel, work, dog illness [it's intestinal, don't ask me to go there], and the all-important BETA-ING of some brilliant pieces which have yet to be posted but will rock the world of fanfic, see if they don't).
Anyway. Here goes my initial attemp at trying to catch up, starting with a quote from Kafka. I ran across this somewhere in my past, because I remember bits of it, but encountered it again recently and it stuck with me:
An ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us. F**king awesome. Can any of those perpetual NYT best-seller-list hack-denizens do that? I doubt it. Stephen King maybe, erratically. Danielle Steele or James Patterson: I highly doubt it. We read those to numb ourselves, to comfort ourselves, or to distract ourselves, not to challenge us or awaken us. They're pompoms, not ice axes.
I love the ice axes.
OK, I haven't actually been reading Kafka (he's best in the original Klingon, by the way). The quote was the lead-in to Chaim Potok's The Promise, which I did read and which I enjoyed very much (not an ice axe but perhaps an ice pick?). The central story of Reuven and Danny -- their friendship, their relationships with Rachel and her cousin Michael -- is OK, but far more than that I loved the theological debates, the intricate windings of Jewish law, the delineation of the conflict between the orthodox Jews who came to America after World War II and the more open ones like Reuven's father, who want to apply textual criticism to the Torah, like archaeologists trying to dig down to the truth buried under later accretions. Although I've read a good bit about WWII I knew very little about its impact on the Jewish faith -- that it would spawn a fierce orthodoxy among those who survived the concentration camps, unable to accept any challenge to Judaism, even an internal one done in the spirit of respect for truth, had never occurred to me, but it makes perfect sense: millions of Jews died for their faith; if any part of the Torah is wrong then they died for a lie?? Heresy!!! I ended up with a strong sympathy for the most unsympathetic character in the entire book (Rav Kalman), and not a little impatience with Reuven for being a bit dense, making no effort to understand him. But perhaps that was Potok's goal (if so, well done!)
The character of Abraham Gordon, trying to (paradoxically) formulate a way to be a good Jew without the theology -- in other words, respect for the value of tradition but minus the concept of a personal God -- is a precursor to the Jewish secular humanism movement (which I was marginally familiar with, as I have a colleague whose partner is headmaster at a JSH school; it was invented in Detroit, how weird is that?). So now I have to go read the book I picked up on our trip to Ithaca in June, on the Midrash :)
Here's the really weird bit though. My experience has been that books -- not all of them, but some of them, the ice-axe ones -- come to you for a reason, at the time you need them. I'd checked out The Promise six or eight weeks ago as one of my Random Book Experiments (I go to a shelf, close my eyes, pick a book at random; it helps to expand my horizons). I'd read the first chapter or so, not enough to have any idea where it was going, and set it aside as it failed to catch my interest. Then near the end of September, I discovered that someone I know and love (i.e. family) had for a long time suffered from depression (and still carried a good bit of anger, due in part to certain things in his relationship with parental units). The next day I picked up The Promise, read it through to the end, and lo and behold the main subplot involves an adolescent boy suffering from depression, anxiety, and anger due to problems with his parents.
It's not identical to the family situation I learned about, but very similar issues and dynamics. "When the pupil is ready, the teacher will come," or so they say. Books have always been my best teachers and I've learned to listen to them.
On a completely different note, I foresee Epic Phail with NaNoWriMo. I've done zip, zilch, bupkus, nada, niente, or as a long-time friend would put it, "King Zippy Nada." Pfffft. Oh, and I chomped down on a handful of peanuts when I got home from work and a back tooth cracked in half and fell out.
Not so good there.
I think I'll have another glass of wine and go to bed.
Anyway. Here goes my initial attemp at trying to catch up, starting with a quote from Kafka. I ran across this somewhere in my past, because I remember bits of it, but encountered it again recently and it stuck with me:
If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? Good God, we would also be happy if we had no books [ok, I take issue with him that, but on we go...], and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are the books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
An ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us. F**king awesome. Can any of those perpetual NYT best-seller-list hack-denizens do that? I doubt it. Stephen King maybe, erratically. Danielle Steele or James Patterson: I highly doubt it. We read those to numb ourselves, to comfort ourselves, or to distract ourselves, not to challenge us or awaken us. They're pompoms, not ice axes.
I love the ice axes.
OK, I haven't actually been reading Kafka (he's best in the original Klingon, by the way). The quote was the lead-in to Chaim Potok's The Promise, which I did read and which I enjoyed very much (not an ice axe but perhaps an ice pick?). The central story of Reuven and Danny -- their friendship, their relationships with Rachel and her cousin Michael -- is OK, but far more than that I loved the theological debates, the intricate windings of Jewish law, the delineation of the conflict between the orthodox Jews who came to America after World War II and the more open ones like Reuven's father, who want to apply textual criticism to the Torah, like archaeologists trying to dig down to the truth buried under later accretions. Although I've read a good bit about WWII I knew very little about its impact on the Jewish faith -- that it would spawn a fierce orthodoxy among those who survived the concentration camps, unable to accept any challenge to Judaism, even an internal one done in the spirit of respect for truth, had never occurred to me, but it makes perfect sense: millions of Jews died for their faith; if any part of the Torah is wrong then they died for a lie?? Heresy!!! I ended up with a strong sympathy for the most unsympathetic character in the entire book (Rav Kalman), and not a little impatience with Reuven for being a bit dense, making no effort to understand him. But perhaps that was Potok's goal (if so, well done!)
The character of Abraham Gordon, trying to (paradoxically) formulate a way to be a good Jew without the theology -- in other words, respect for the value of tradition but minus the concept of a personal God -- is a precursor to the Jewish secular humanism movement (which I was marginally familiar with, as I have a colleague whose partner is headmaster at a JSH school; it was invented in Detroit, how weird is that?). So now I have to go read the book I picked up on our trip to Ithaca in June, on the Midrash :)
Here's the really weird bit though. My experience has been that books -- not all of them, but some of them, the ice-axe ones -- come to you for a reason, at the time you need them. I'd checked out The Promise six or eight weeks ago as one of my Random Book Experiments (I go to a shelf, close my eyes, pick a book at random; it helps to expand my horizons). I'd read the first chapter or so, not enough to have any idea where it was going, and set it aside as it failed to catch my interest. Then near the end of September, I discovered that someone I know and love (i.e. family) had for a long time suffered from depression (and still carried a good bit of anger, due in part to certain things in his relationship with parental units). The next day I picked up The Promise, read it through to the end, and lo and behold the main subplot involves an adolescent boy suffering from depression, anxiety, and anger due to problems with his parents.
It's not identical to the family situation I learned about, but very similar issues and dynamics. "When the pupil is ready, the teacher will come," or so they say. Books have always been my best teachers and I've learned to listen to them.
On a completely different note, I foresee Epic Phail with NaNoWriMo. I've done zip, zilch, bupkus, nada, niente, or as a long-time friend would put it, "King Zippy Nada." Pfffft. Oh, and I chomped down on a handful of peanuts when I got home from work and a back tooth cracked in half and fell out.
Not so good there.
I think I'll have another glass of wine and go to bed.