In the space of a sentence or two, an image of homeless men looking for food abruptly shifts to the crashing surf. Intensely naturalistic scenes that take place on a baseball diamond or in a synagogue give way to an equally vivid memory of a youthful nightmare or Yiddish folk tale. Potok's prose is saturated and dense, with sudden juxtapositions in style and tone. "If you don't, you're dead in the water artistically," he said. He also helped the late violinist Isaac Stern write his autobiography, My First Seventy-nine Years.īut for every novel that Potok published, he wrote between three and five manuscripts that he discarded. Among Potok's four non-fiction works, Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jews, traced Jewish history to the patriarch Abraham 4,000 years ago. Over 34 years, he wrote 14 books, including three children's novels. While Potok loved teaching, there never was any question as to his true vocation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |