A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka (2014) By Lev Golinkin

The title seems a bit cutesy, until you know its meaning. A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka by Lev Golinkin, is a remarkable book. Hilarious in parts, it is an autobiography covering some not so funny topics. 

 

In most major cities in America during the 70’s and 80’s, one routinely saw countless demonstrations under the banner of Save Soviet Jews. Golinkin’s life today is a result of those demonstrations. He was just ten years-old when his family was finally able to flee the Soviet-era Ukraine. The book tells of the Golinkin family’s life in the Ukraine and the bureaucratic process of leaving, blocked by the Soviets, and bureaucratically hampered again by the West. It covers their time as refugees without a state, and their eventual settlement in the United States.

While it seems unusual for someone so young to be writing an autobiography, Golinkin has experienced more in his still young life than most people will witness in their entire lives. Talk about cultural shock, he went from Kharkov in the Ukraine; to Vienna, Austria; to West Lafayette, Indiana; to East Windsor, New Jersey; and then on to Boston College, run by Jesuits; with side trips to Appalachia and Tijuana.

But the book is not simply about the politics and geography of what happens to refugees, it is also about what being a refugee does to people as individuals.

   

Throughout the USSR and its vassal states, Jews were second class citizens subjected to civil, social and physical abuse. In the Ukraine the day-to-day reality was so all-encompassing that Lev’s self-esteem was rock bottom as a child, and destroyed entirely once he entered school. He was a “Zhid.” While the etymology of that word is open to debate, its use in the Russian vernacular was not. It meant not just a “nasty Jew,” but as a group “an epidemic, a sinister cancer that Russians felt was ravaging their country.” That’s what his classmates were taught in school. Lev stayed away from school as often as possible, and stopped looking at himself in mirrors because the reflections confirmed his status.

 

The stateless refugee time period added more layers to his esteem problem. Though they were relieved to be relatively free from overt discrimination, his family was now dependent on the generosity of others.

Once in the US, the Golinkins faced the challenges common to all immigrants: language, lack of documentation (birth certificates, education degrees, etc.) and other employment barriers. His father was a prominent engineer in Russia and his mother a doctor. But they had to start over again in their new home, his father in a clerical job, and his mother as a coffee barista. Perhaps worse was the increasingly evident realization by Lev that having freedom of religion is a complicated right, especially when religion was a factor in one's years of oppression.

 

The impact of the psychological damage was/is lasting; dealing with its consequences is what led Golinkin to write about it. After years of holding it in, he needed to acknowledge everything that had happened to him and his family, and hundreds of thousands of others, and how it impacted every aspect of their lives. This process was an essential step to begin moving on.

    

At the onset of this review I mentioned that the book is hilarious, though by now you probably don’t believe me.  Yet, it is.  His stories, about learning English, about how and when to use the “f” word [always], about discovering there are 18 towns in the U.S. named Lafayette, and more -- is all great material, particularly when one considers the tradition of Jewish humor.  Whether this humor is a defense mechanism on Golinkin’s part, or a literary ploy, it works to make the story bearable.

Recommendation: a must read!

Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (1985) By Richard Powers

“Life is three dimensional,” four words, or in the case of Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance by Richard Powers, a 352-page novel. The book was a slow read because I had to stop at the end of every sentence to ponder the author’s purpose. It was a challenge, but that’s not a complaint.  

Throughout Three Farmers I found myself concentrating not on the story, but on the structure of the novel. It is actually two books merged into one: past and present, with a side-bar toward the future. Foremost, Three Farmers is a philosophy treatise, a collection of essays. They appear as digressions from the second book, a novel. 

The novel is interesting in its own right. While traveling to Boston, Peter (one of several main characters) must deal with a lengthy layover in Detroit, waiting for a connecting train. To kill time he visits the famed Detroit Institute of the Arts. At the museum he comes across a black and white photo titled Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, one of whom bears a striking resemblance to Peter. (While still in Chapter 1, we’ve already come across two major digressions: one a commentary on Detroit, the other on Diego Rivera’s industrial murals that engulf the main entrance to the museum – both are worthwhile essays). The book is about Peter’s quest to determine the identity of the three individuals in the photograph, there is no defining information at the Museum. 

Diego Rivera

Chapter 2 will take us back to 1914, rural Germany, just three months before the outbreak of The Great War – The War to End All Wars – World War I, also known as the prelude to World War II. The chapter introduces us to three young men, dressed in their Sunday best, on their way to the village’s Spring Festival.  One of the boys is a German, the other two are his Belgian stepbrothers.  A photographer stops to take their picture.

The remainder of the novel connects the first two chapters, uncovering the story of this picture from two angles: as the young men advance forward in their lives, and as Peter traces their lives backwards from when he saw the photograph in the museum some 70 years later. The book gets confusing at times as the narrator-location-year change frequently, but stick with it.

The digressions and plot limbs are limitless: the life of Sarah Bernhardt, Henry Ford’s Peace Ship, young love, farming, a tobacco shop, war reporting, the Parisian underground, and a closing future reference to Yalta – all pawns of history.  The photography references are timeless, including this from the photographer of the photo:  “A car is for getting from start to finish as quickly as possible.  But I earn a living by pointing out what happens between.”

Recommendation:  Do read, and don’t rush it.

Tel Aviv Noir (2014) Edited by Etgar Keret and Assaf Gavron

With the book market consolidating it is difficult to find publishers willing to take-on new writers; fortunately, Akashic Books considers it a calling. In 2004 they printed Brooklyn Noir which became the first of dozens of books in the “Noir” series. They are anthologies of work by emerging writers in specific literary locales. In 2014, Tel Aviv Noir made its entry in the series.

The publishers don’t select the authors in the Noir books. Instead, they commission established writers who are a part of literary life of a city to discover new writers ready to present to the world market. For Tel Aviv they selected Assaf Gavron, a writer I was previously unfamiliar with, whose latest work is The Hilltop, also published in U.S. last year; and Etgar Keret, who I’ve raved about before and reviewed in my BookBlog (Suddenly a Knock on the Door). Gavron and Keret chose to explore the dark side of Tel Aviv as their theme. 

  

Tel Aviv is an interesting place, I’ve been there once, while vacationing in Israel. I was there long enough to catch the city’s appeal, but not long enough to become even remotely familiar with it. It is widely called “the Bubble” because it is a culturally modern European city in the mist of the not so modern Middle East. It is an undisputed hot bed of international music and literature. The tourism business tells you about the city’s stunning Mediterranean beaches and fashionable resort hotel strip.  Tel Aviv Noir tells you the rest.

 

Collected in the book are 17 short stories by 15 “new” writers, and then one each from Gavron and Keret. Among my favorites are:

• Deakla Keydar’s thought provoking short story titled Slow Cooking involves a middle-aged woman whose marriage is in decline. Her husband has moved out. At work her colleagues urge her to pursue a doctor who is one of their customers. By reviewing his purchasing records, she believes he is recently either divorced or widowed. Based on that, she gives in and arranges to meet him at a soup kitchen he volunteers at -- she’s just going to drop off some prepared food. The soup kitchen is at a park in an immigrant/refugee neighborhood. [Most of the world is so fixated with the Israeli-Palestinian divide that it misses the fact that Israel is one of the most multi-cultural places on Earth]. Her encounter at the park with an African man who does not speak Hebrew is a learning experience for her, him, and her family. 

• One of the funnier stories in the collection is Clear Recent History by Gon Ben Ari. The story is about a man who enlists an old friend to help him with a personal problem. He’s being blackmailed, it seems a computer hacker has figured out a way to pirate his camcorder activities.

• The Expendables by Gai Ad tells the story of a woman who returns to the workforce after the death of her husband. In it she ponders whether she wants to have a second relationship now that she is a widow, and wonders if doing so is even appropriate. When she makes her decision she finds out many factors impact one’s life, for better or worse.

• Swirl is a story by Silje Bekeng that expands on what is known as “Shin Bet folklore," Shin Bet being the Israeli version of the CIA. The story is moving and creepy at the same time.

• Darker than the other stories is Said The Good by Antonio Ungar. It is set in the Arab neighborhood of Ajami, in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv. Its cast of characters includes an ethnic hodgepodge of Israelis, Arabs, immigrant Europeans and Boris, a Ukrainian who is supposed to be a Jewish refugee, but apparently is not. The story involves family and the drug trade.  Think the Godfather and you get the goal. 

  
Other stories are: Sleeping Mask by Gadi Taub; Women by Matan Hermoni; The Time-Slip Detective by Lavie Tidhar; My Father’s Kingdom by Shimon Adaf; Who’s a Good Boy by Julia Fermentto; The Tour Guide by Yoav Katz; and Death in Pajamas by Alex Epstein.

 

As I mentioned earlier, this was my first time reading Gavron. His contribution to the book is probably the best. Titled Center, the story is the tale of a pool contractor who places a yellow pages ad under the “private detectives” heading. He gets hired and brings on a close friend to solve a crime. 

  

Keret’s contribution is quite short at six-pages, and as always, is an irreverent story. It is titled Allergies, it's about a dog. Keret has developed a reputation for books with humorous illustrations and that carries through to Tel Aviv Noir – at the beginning of the book is a map with each author’s name superimposed on a police-chalk drawing of a dead body in the neighborhood their story is set in.

 

The stories in this collection were first written in Hebrew, Spanish, or English.  This book marks their first English publication.