Alexandrian Summer

 Just a short note since I have an 8 am appointement with the dental hygienist (a yearly thing).

I spent yesterday - my birthday - reading Yitzhak Gormezano Goren's Alexandrian Summer (New Vessel Press, 2015, translated from the Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan). This novel was originally published in 1978. It is 171pages in paperback and maybe a bit too slight for what I want to put upon its back. You should reed it and judge for yourselves. It is not Ulysses but it is lot more fun to read. All the same it may have something to teach us.

One thing it shows on its narrow canvas is how cosmopolitan was the the Alexandria, Egypt of 1952. It shows how rich Jews fit into that city's society while overhead loomed the possible pogrom.

Strange tome, the novel's Jews come across indifferent to Israel.

And all these are gropings of one outside the several cultures described in the novel.

What I feel more certain about is how I like Goren's writing. He handles the opening of the novel by breaking down the fourth wall:

The Arab servant looks at you with a hint of suspicion. "Who are you, missier?" and you give him your name Hebraized to fit the Israel of the 1950s, which rejected all foreign sounds. The servant does not decipher any connection  between the two names. To him the strange name could be Greek or Turkish or Italian or Maltese or Armenian or French or British or even American. Alexandria is the center of the world, a cosmopolitan city. You wan to add: yes, I used to be Robert, too. Twenty years ago. I'm coming from twenty years away. I won't interrupt, I just want to watch. I won't interfere, God forbid. I just want to tell the story of one summer, a Mediterranean summer, an Alexandrian summer.

p. 2, Chapter 1: From Twenty Years Away

Goren compresses like a short story writer. Notice how his sentences flow.

But also notice how he acknowledges the autobiographical aspect. This even though Goren's counterpart engages ion acts of sodomy. No way Ernest Hemingway would've published this novel - so we are in a different country, indeed. I offer this up as the lesson I learned: what we can write about is far broader than what others might have, would have, published, for out there are writers with far different horizons. Goren shows us life has many aspects.

sch

2/28/20