What We're Reading: The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn

I've been writing about The Lost for the past several months.

I did finally finish the book, and it turns out that once you're past the first 50 or so pages, it's an emotional drain. The whole way.

I'm glad I wove some fluffy fiction in throughout the book.

I'm also very glad I read it.

In the end, Mendelsohn finds his family. He even stands in the spot where his grandfather's brother and his daughter hid – a three-by-three basement, about eight feet deep.

For the spatially challenged among you, imagine eating, sleeping, going to the toilet, resting and everything else you could do, in your refrigerator.

With your daughter.

Or your father.

Mendelsohn is able to touch the earth where his great-uncle and his mother's cousin were shot after they were discovered.

It's a long, exhausting journey; you should take it yourself to see how he gets there.

The author spent the better part of seven years writing the book. Eight people who were instrumental to the writing died between the time Mendelsohn met them and the time the book was published. Except for one one of them – who died just before Mendelsohn was able to meet her, though he did get to speak with her on the phone.

One thing that strikes me about the book is the way Mendelsohn is able to organize the narrative for his readers. It's a long, convoluted journey. There's some fact, there's some speculation, there are a lot of contradictory stories.

Another thing that strikes me is the amount of help Mendelsohn is able to dig up. Not only from his family (between his parents' stories and his brother's photography) and his teachers (one travels with him more than once), but from total strangers – a younger man who happens to be studying the Jews of the area from which his family came carts him around Poland and Ukraine, translating, for days at a time; a man who has already taken it upon himself to track down all the survivors from the area carts him around Israel, translating.

Serendipity, kindness, coincidence: these are all part of the story, and all in a big way.

The Lost Update: How to tell the story

I have promised myself never to see the film Schindler's List again.

This is not a statement on Steven Speilberg's amazing interpretation of Thomas Keanelly's rather dry – though ultimately interesting – tome.

It is not a statement on the girl in the red sweater – the only piece of color in the film.

I saw the film twice in the theater. Once was with a group of fellow Jewish high school students. We sat, immobile, in the theater after the movie, until theater personnel told us we had to leave so they could begin letting in the crowd for the next showing.

The second time was with my Irish Catholic friend B—. We were very close in high school, I was one of the very few Jewish friends he had, and it was important to him to have me along for the experience, for some cultural reference, history, conversation.

I broke down crying at the same point in both showings: when Oskar Schindler falls against his car, crying, "If I could only have saved one more."

I've read lots of books, seen lots of movies, about the Holocaust. The only two other works I've exposed myself to multiple times are the film Life is Beautiful, which I've seen twice, and Elie Wiesel's book Night, which I've read three times (once for a class).

The point is, by now, more than 60 years after the end of World War II, hundreds upon hundreds of books have been written; dozens upon dozens of films have been made; thousands upon thousands of stories have been told.

All the stories are remarkable. The individual stories of survival, the individual remembrances. All are powerful.

So how do we tell a story about the Holocaust, and make it stand out? Have we reached a saturation point? Is it possible?

Daniel Mendelsohn does address this question, although it is not his question, in The Lost.

And there's no real answer. The answer has to be, you tell your story, and hope people find it interesting.

And so that's what Mendelsohn does.

For more posts about The Lost, click here.

What we're reading: Drinking Coffee Elsewhere: Stories by ZZ Packer

Sometimes I judge books by their covers.

I was checking out the new DeWitt Community Library. It's lighter and airier, a lot more space now. Wandering the aisles, I came across this book, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Drinking coffee elsewhere, I thought, it's kind of what I do.

And the cover had a photo of an old-fashioned empty booze bottle (capped) on an empty street, under a gray sky with a haze of blurred-out buildings in the back.

Have I said the word bleak lately around these parts?

I totally missed the word "Stories," and so was surprised when I opened up the book. I didn't read the jacket, didn't notice the author's photo.

I don't look like an "other." This has its advantages. Middle class white maleness is the norm in the U.S. (even if it's not the majority, or even plurality, probably). I have to go pretty far out of my way to have people look at me funny.

This also has what some might consider its disadvantages. I don't look like an "other," but being Jewish, I am definitely an "other." I was at a hockey game with a couple of friends not too long ago, a husband-and-wife couple. I'd known the husband well, and gradually got to know his wife.

Anyway, knowing that my family and I live in different places, she asked what I was doing for Easter. I tend to forget that not everyone knows I'm Jewish, so when I looked at her blankly and said, "uh, nothing?" and she looked back at me blankly, I realized we had a little disconnect there.

I explained. She was embarrassed. We're over it. I'm going over there for Easter dinner. It gets me out of the house, and it gives them an excuse not to drive four hours for a family affair. Everybody wins.

Ummm, Josh, tangent much?

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is very much about black experiences. I had to get all the way through the opening story, "Brownies," before I felt like I was welcome to read the book. As I started the book, I felt like I was intruding on something. On someone else's world. And I didn't know if they wanted me there.

I learned a lot from the book, I think. I don't care, really, whether these stories are entirely fictional, based in fact, or at all autobiographical. Packer's writing connects what we'd like to think are abstractions – race, gender, sexuality, religion – with tangible, real-world experiences. She describes her characters as, say, having the complexion of "a good scotch," rather than describing a light-skinned black woman.

Have I gained any actual knowledge, any true insight, into the experience of someone who looks like an "other"? I don't know. It's something I've been conscious of for several years, but I still don't really know how people think I see them. Have I been given some new insights into perspective? I hope so.

This book, by the way, is the first in a very long time that's made me want to read anything about the author. Here's an in-depth interview she did with indentitytheory.com after the release of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.

Update: The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn

A lot happens in 100 pages.

As Mendelsohn progresses with his story, the language becomes first more flowery, then more friendly – he's not forcing the words anymore, he's telling a story (as opposed to setting it up).

The turning point, actually, is Mendelsohn's description of his grandfather's suicide. The story is told with admiration, and when you get done reading it, you go back and re-read it, because you're unclear on what you just read. You think you read it, then suddenly you're not sure. When you get done, it's a "holy crap!" moment.

The thing that's most striking about this is the amount of work Mendelsohn puts into this book. He flies across continents. He spends hours on the phone with strangers. He builds relationships with the parents of friends and co-workers. He learns languages.

This is not, "hey, I've got an interesting idea, I think I'll write a book."

It's not, "I think I'll try doing such-and-such and write about my experience."

This is, "I have to do this, and I will pass along the interesting bits."

Along the way, Mendelsohn is writing his own Midrash – Bible commentary. He names parts of his book after parshot – portions of the Torah (the five Books of Moses) read weekly.

The Lost is not something read, it's something experienced.

There will be an update in the not-too-distant future.

For all entries on Mendelsohn's book, click here.

What we're reading: The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn

This is going to be a long, slow read, but we'll check in with it occasionally, because it's interesting.

The Lost is Daniel Mendelsohn's search for a branch of his family that was killed during the Holocaust. He's heard stories about so many members of his family, has inquired in letters to older relatives about cousins and great-aunts and so many others.

But his Uncle Shmiel, his wife and his four daughters, decided, after emigrating to the U.S. for a time, to return to Eastern Europe, where they were subsequently killed by the Nazis.

People don't really talk about Shmiel and his family.

Due primarily to the layout of the book (small text, tiny margins) and the language (fairly formal – something you might expect from someone who regularly writes for the New York Times Book Review – which is just not something I typically read for leisure), I'm making very slow progress on it, and am reading other books simultaneously.

But like I said, it's an interesting book. I've made a note to go back and read Genesis, to try to see the people as people, rather than upright, uber-holy Biblical characters.

More on the book next week.

What we're reading: The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

When I was writing for a newspaper, I met a man who, in trying to memorize a complicated mathematical proof of his own concoction, wrote his equation on the inside of a paper bag, and walked around his attic apartment with the paper bag on his head for four days until he had it down pat.

He is what we call a wingnut. This is not the medical term. Nor is it, I imagine, the politically correct one.

I think of wingnuttery as working on a V-shaped spectrum. My paper-bag-wearing friend, strange but benign, might be the bottom point of the V. As we head up the right side, we get political wingnuts like George W. Bush and, further up, Joseph Stalin. Along the left side, we get pontificating wingnuts like Eric Hoffer and, further up, Noam Chomsky.

And pretty much anyone who blogs because they feel like they have something interesting to say. Hi, pot. Meet kettle. Anywho...

The story on Hoffer goes like this. When he was seven, his mom fell while carrying him downstairs, and young Eric went blind.

When he turned 15, his eyesight magically reappeared, and he began reading as much as he could as fast as he could, lest his eyesight go away again.

Hoffer never graduated high school, but he read. A lot.

His first and best-known book, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements came out in 1951, when the world was reeling from World War II, Hitler, Stalin and the vague beginnings of the Cold War.

The True Believer reads like a how-to guide for any pretentious human who wishes to start and maintain a revolution, then oversee the final result when it's done being a revolution.

With the perspective of 50-plus years since the book's publication, the guide still holds up. To run a revolution, you need people who can write, people who can convince (oratorically and forcefully) and people who can organize.

To get people on board with your revolution, make sure the past looks glorious and the present looks bleak (but not desperate – people who spend their days hunting for scraps of food aren't going to get behind a cause). Also, people who are bored make great revolutionaries.

To keep people on board after you've reached critical mass, make sure they don't think too much.

To me, the most striking point makes a lot of sense: Someone prone to revolution will get behind pretty much any revolution; it doesn't matter what the cause is.

The book is going to appeal to a narrow cross-section of people: Those with a large vocabulary (words like religiofication and renascence pop up every other paragraph) who don't mind specious citations (the one source I was interested in exploring was in Section 8; when I got to the footnote, it told me to refer to Section 111 – not only is he using the current work as the source, he's using something 100 pages after what you're reading as the source).

How ignorant do you have to be?

Biblically speaking, there are two major differences between Jews and Christians. Jesus, obviously, is the big one. The other is food – some items are kosher based on what they are and how they die (and how they're prepared), some items are kosher for Passover, some mixtures are not kosher, and some things just aren't kosher at all.

Horses, you might not have known, are not kosher. They do not have cloven hooves.

Pigs on the other hand, I think even the most secular, religion-proof Westerner knows are not kosher. Like you'd really really have to not pay attention to anything to not know that.

So why an upscale New York – yes, New York, home to an awful lot of Jews – decided pushing ham for Chanukah was a good idea, is absolutely beyond me.

Maybe someone didn't know ham comes from a pig....

What we're reading: Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander

Shalom Auslander grew up in an ultra-orthodox Jewish community. These are the guys you see with the black hats, the black overcoats, the long beards and the sidecurls, with their wives and full litters of children in tow.

It's a mitzvah – a commandment – to procreate.

Auslander grew up in a world where men and women prayed separately, God was vengeful, and masturbation was absolutely, positively forbidden.

Also, because his first name, which translates to peace in English, is one of the names for God, he was not allowed to put his full name on tests, essays or anything else growing up. If he did, the test was placed immediately in a box with lots of other pieces of paper with God's name on them.

The box would then be given a proper burial. Because if you threw away a piece of paper with God's name on it, well, watch out.

Growing up, Auslander saw a great disconnect between what he learned in school and at home, and what he saw in the world outside.

Boys holding hands with girls. Wonderful magazines full of pictures of women wearing nothing. Slim Jims. Cheese-flavored Slim Jims.

I've never bought the idea of a vengeful God. Nor have I bought the idea of a humorless God. (As Kevin Smith says in the foreword to Dogma, "consider the platypus.")

In order for me to accept God, I have to think we can speak on the same level occasionally. Kind of like the God in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who positively hates when people grovel.

How much, "oh, God, you are so great!" can one deity take before realizing people are blowing smoke up God's ass?

Anyway, Auslander agrees, but his upbringing is such that he's just not sure enough. He writes funny stories about God, and just when he has almost a full book of short stories written, he deletes the entire file off his hard drive, lest someone he know dies.

Because God would kill his wife, his son, his editor, his neighbor, whomever, just to torture Auslander.

When God lets Auslander's Rangers make it to the Stanley Cup finals and then presents Auslander with an opportunity to go to the game, it turns out it's on the Sabbath. So he and his wife trudge from their New Jersey home into Manhattan on foot, because God won't let them drive on the Sabbath.

When the Rangers lose the game, Auslander goes over to buy a non-kosher hot dog from a vendor across the way. When he pays for the dog with a $5 bill, his wife glares at him.

"You carried money on the Sabbath? That's why they lost!"

You get the idea. Auslander is funny, open, and better yet, he's a great conversational writer. The book is probably funnier if you're Jewish or have some knowledge of the community. And be aware that there is plenty of masturbation. Enough for me to have mentioned it twice in this post.

You've been warned.