Well, yeah, it is sort of ridiculously ridiculous to rate from 1 – 12 a batch of books published over a wide range of years and in genres as varied as stories in translation, poetry, history, historical fiction, travel writing, biography, and autobiography. But it works for me! I have been posting these always-eclectic annual top books read lists for Madam Mayo blog since 2006. Aside from serving as a reading diary for myself, it is my gift to you, dear writerly reader: If you are not familiar with any given book on this list, should it appeal to you to try it, may you find it as wondrously enriching a read as I did.
(1) The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams By Jove and by Jupiter, whyever did I not read this sooner?! Every chapter a chocolate truffle, The Education of Henry Adams is a fundamental text for comprehending the culture and overall development of the United States.
P.S. Michael Lindgrin has more to say about ye tome, “this strange and beautiful journey of a book,” over at The Millions.
Reading Cather is a joy. Both of these Cather novels are well-deserved American literary classics. Over the past couple of years I have been turtling my way through Cather’s oeuvre. So far: The Professor’s House (top books read list for 2017) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (top books read list for 2018).
“You don’t need to take a book off the shelf to know there is a voice inside that is waiting to speak to you, and behind that was someone who truly believed that if he or she spoke, someone would listen.”
(4) Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell I read this novel only because my book club picked it– lucky me. It’s wickedly funny, and, curiously, and most elegantly, written in crots. (I was unaware of Connell’s work when I wrote one of my own early short stories, also in crots, also published in the Paris Review. Well, howdy there, Mr. C! If you were still alive it sure would be fun to talk to you about crots!)
P.S. See Gerald Shapiro’s profile of Evan S. Connell in Ploughshares.
(5)Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu by Ted Anton Yet another work I wish I had read years earlier. Culiano was the author of Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. His life ended early, and not well, alas. I never met Culiano but I was at University of Chicago for several years just before he arrived, so I knew the super-charged intellectual ambiance well– and I think Anton captures it quite accurately. Recently occultist John Michael Greer has been making noises about Culiano’s understanding of cacomagic, and this the unnamed subject of Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, which is what prompted me to finally pick up this biography, which had been long languishing in my “to read” pile. (If you’re a metaphysics nerd and cacomagic is what you’re interested in specifically, however, Anton’s biography, otherwise excellent, will disappoint.)
(6) Tie:
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West by Wallace Stegner Stegner is always a rare pleasure to read. I came away with immense admiration for John Wesley Powell’s many and visionary achievements. And the whole problem of water in the West thing!! Obvious as that may be, but I grew up in the West and it was not so obvious to me, nor to most people I knew at the time, and this book goes a long way towards explaining why. (Illuminating indeed to pair this work with a Cather novel… see above…)
A Desert Harvest by Bruce Berger This splendid anthology collects selected essays from Bruce Berger’s masterwork of a desert trilogy, The Telling Distance, Almost an Island, and There Was a River. P.S. Read my Q & A with Bruce Berger here.
The Western Paradox by Benard DeVoto Edited by David Brinkley and Patricia Nelson Limerick with a foreword by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Crunchy! (I still have all my teeth, though!)
(7) Tie:
Lone Star Mind by Ty Cashion Professor Cashion articulates the kooky contradictions and tectonic shifts in both popular and academic versions of Texas history. A landmark work in Texas historiography.
Giant: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber, and the Making of a Legendary American Film by Don Graham I will be writing about this work at some length in my book on Far West Texas. At first glance, for the splashy photos of the stars on its cover, it might appear to be the usual intellectually nutritious-as-a-Ding Dong film history book. But no! Graham knew Texas like almost no one else, and for Texas, Giant, based on the novel by Edna Ferber, was a film of profound cultural importance.
(13) The Chrysalids by John Wyndham I’m not a fan of sci-fi novels; I read this one about post-nuclear apocalypse Canada only because my book club chose it. I found it to be a page-turner with splendid prose throughout (although I did some eyerolling at the end when it did get a little “inner most cave-y” and “Deus-ex-Machine-y”). I can appreciate why it remains in print, and beloved by many, more than six decades after it was first published in 1955.
P.S. I can also warmly recommend the books by authors featured in my monthly Q & As.
Yenta Mash and her stories will be remembered because they have rare and masterful elegance, uncanny insight into vast prairie-like swaths human nature, and unusual heart. They also tell stories entirely new for many English-speaking people, that of the Jewish exiles to Siberia under Stalin during World War II, and their later migration to Israel. Translator Ellen Cassedy’s is a transcendent achievement; with Mash’s On the Landing she has brought a landmark book into English.
Translator Ellen Cassedy’s is a transcendent achievement; with Mash’s On the Landing she has brought a landmark book into English.
Ellen Cassedy is the author of We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust and co-translator (with Yermiyahu Ahron Taub) of Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories by Blume Lempel. She was a 2015 Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow, and On the Landing is a result of her fellowship. Her website is www.ellencassedy.com.
C.M. MAYO: How might you describe the ideal reader for these stories?
ELLEN CASSEDY: Anyone interested in fine literature! Mash is a great read – clear, sometimes funny, and full of ground-level truths about what it was like to live through great cataclysms of the 20th Century.
C.M. MAYO: When and why were you inspired to translate Yenta Mash?
ELLEN CASSEDY: I learned of Mash’s work through the Yiddish Book Center’s translation fellowship program. Having died in 2013, she’s basically a contemporary writer. She was a down-to-earth and often witty observer of a changing world, who drew on her own life of multiple uprootings in telling the stories of people who are forever on the move.
Even in the most harrowing settings, Mash is somehow inspiring. Young and old, her characters are solid, sturdy people with a sense of humor. They’re survivors, people who land on their feet.
The
collection begins in a vibrant Jewish town reminiscent of the one in “Fiddler
on the Roof.”
We then join women prisoners being transported into the Siberian gulag, with its frozen steppes, snowy forests, and surging rivers. After the exile, we see the Jewish community rebuilding itself behind the postwar Iron Curtain. Finally, we join refugees in Israel in the 1970’s, struggling with the challenges of assimilation and the awkwardness of a land where young people instruct their elders, instead of the other way around.
C.M. MAYO: You are also a translator of the Yiddish writer Blume Lempel. Both Lempel and Mash write of suffering, exile, and grief, and yet they are very different writers, with very different experiences during and after the war. In a writerly sense, what are some of the differences that especially strike you?
ELLEN CASSEDY: Mash (1922-2013) and Blume Lempel (1907-1999) grew up in tiny towns in Eastern Europe, not far apart from each other. Both suffered persecution, displacement, and appalling losses.
Lempel left home for Paris as a young woman, fled to America in 1939, and spent the remainder of her life in New York. Her work feels shattered, fractured, unhinged. Her gemlike, poetic style and decidedly unconventional narrative strategies take readers into a realm of trauma and madness. The title story, “Oedipus in Brooklyn,” is Exhibit #1 of her taboo-defying oeuvre.
As a young woman, Mash was deported to Siberia by the Soviets in 1941. She did seven years of hard labor there, then spent three decades in Soviet Moldova before immigrating to Israel in the 1970’s. Her work bears witness in an urgent, orderly, and exacting fashion to a life full of tumult. Her language is alive with regionalisms carried to new places, bits of multiple languages picked up along the way, and neologisms invented to describe new circumstances.
ELLEN CASSEDY: The world of Yiddish writers after World War II was like a virtual café on a global scale. Yiddish newspapers, literary journals, and literary prizes flourished, as did intense epistolary friendships. I don’t have any evidence that Mash and Lempel corresponded, but they must have read each other’s work in Di goldene keyt, the flagship literary journal published in Tel Aviv. And they knew some of the same Yiddish literary figures, including the eminent poet and journal editor Abraham Sutzkever.
“The world of Yiddish writers after World War II was like a virtual café on a global scale. “
C.M. MAYO: How did working on On the Landing compare to working on Lempel’s Oedipus in Brooklyn and to your other translation projects?
ELLEN CASSEDY: I was fortunate to have Yermiyahu Ahron Taub as a co-translator for the Lempel project. We had a rich collaboration, full of constant back and forth. For the Mash project, I drew on the resources of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA – a wonderful organization that provided me with mentors and a vibrant and an engaged community.
I did the English translation for Yiddish Zoo, a collection of Yiddish poetry for children in three languages. That was a joyful romp with lions and tigers and bears – great fun.
Now I’m working with a gifted cartoonist who’s embarked on a graphic project involving handwritten Yiddish archives. Quite a decoding challenge!
C.M. MAYO: Can you talk about Yenta Mash’s literary influences? (And in which languages did she read?)
ELLEN CASSEDY: Mash knew Russian, Rumanian, Hebrew, and Yiddish. She was drawn to Yiddish literature from early childhood. As a small child, she knew poems by Y.L. Peretz by heart and was familiar with the classical Yiddish writers Sholem Aleichem and Mendele Moykher Sforim. After her years in Siberia, she joined the vibrant Jewish literary circle in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau. But it wasn’t until she was in her fifties, when she immigrated to Israel, that she began to write. She joined the Yiddish literary scene in Israel and was a member of Leivick House, a Yiddish cultural center.
The red marker in this screenshot from Google Maps shows Chisinau, in Moldova, where Yenta Mash lived after her exile to Siberia.
C.M. MAYO: Which writers, in any language, could you compare her to?
ELLEN CASSEDY: Yenta Mash is a master chronicler of exile. Her characters are always on their way to somewhere or from somewhere. That’s why I chose the name “On the Landing,” the name of one of her stories, for the title of my translated collection.
“Yenta Mash is a master chronicler of exile.”
I compare her to other voices of assimilation and resilience – Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake), André Aciman (Out of Egypt), and Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Refugees). Her work is keenly relevant today as displaced people seek refuge across the globe.
C.M. MAYO: I am astonished that writing of such quality is only appearing in English for the first time in 2018. Is there more?
ELLEN CASSEDY: Absolutely! Only a fraction of Yiddish literature from the past 150 years has ever been translated into English. As we gain access to more and more of these buried treasures, I believe Yiddish literature will take its rightful place in the world, as what has been called “a major literature in a minor language.”
“As we gain access to more and more of these buried treasures, I believe Yiddish literature will take its rightful place in the world, as what has been called ‘a major literature in a minor language.'”
There’s an expression in Yiddish, “di goldene keyt,” the golden chain, which refers to how Yiddish literature has been passed down through the ages, with one writer after another adding links to the chain. Yiddish was the language that my Jewish forebears spoke in kitchens, marketplaces, and meeting halls on both sides of the Atlantic. I’m thrilled to be able to add my own link to the chain.
Starting this year, every fourth Monday I run a Q & A with a fellow writer. This fourth Monday features Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, the author of Prodigal Children in the House of G-d: Stories (2018) and six books of poetry, including A Mouse Among Tottering Skyscrapers: Selected Yiddish Poems (2017). Preparing to Dance: New Yiddish Songs, a CD of nine of his Yiddish poems set to music by Michał Gorczyński, was released in 2014. Taub was honored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage as one of New York’s best emerging Jewish artists and has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for a Best of the Net award. With Ellen Cassedy, he is the recipient of the 2012 Yiddish Book Center Translation Prize for Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories by Blume Lempel (2016). His short stories have appeared in such publications as Hamilton Stone Review, Jewish Fiction .net, The Jewish Literary Journal, Jewrotica, Penshaft: New Yiddish Writing, and Second Hand Stories Podcast.
C.M. MAYO: You are co-translator (with Ellen Cassedy) from the Yiddish of Blume Lempel’s extraordinary short stories, Oedipus in Brooklyn. Would you say that Lempel’s work has been an influence on your own fiction? Can you talk a bit about some of your influences, and your favorite writers?
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: Blume Lempel is certainly a source of personal inspiration, and working with Ellen Cassedy on that project was and continues to be a great joy. Despite suffering enormous familial loss in the Holocaust and years of creative block, Lempel built a career as a Yiddish writer with single-minded focus and commitment. She created an authorial voice that was uniquely her own and a prose rich in poetry, experimentation in time and voice, and empathy. She looked at characters at the margins of society and at themes still considered taboo, including abortion, prostitution, and incest. I was drawn to Lempel’s work for all of these reasons and in researching her autobiography, came to be inspired also by the example of her courage in life and art. Our work overlaps somewhat in our interest in life at the margins and blurring the line between poetry and prose, although I think much of Lempel’s work is more firmly anchored than mine in the realm of the experimental and avant-garde. I do see Lempel as a kindred literary spirit.
I have been reading voraciously and widely since childhood. It’s difficult to pinpoint specific literary influences. I prefer to think of texts whose effects remain with me. Even if I don’t recall particular plots, the authors’ themes and concerns, and overall sensibilities remain. I am interested in writers who take risks, who go against the grain, who can create a marriage of emotional impact and beauty of language, who write with psychological acuity and care.
A partial list of favorite English-language fictional texts, in alphabetical order of author’s last name, include:
Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Michelle Cliff, Abeng Marian Engel, Bear Janet Hobhouse, The Furies F.M. Mayor, The Rector’s Daughter Elizabeth McCracken, The Giant’s House: a Romance Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place Joyce Carol Oates, Where is Here? James Purdy, 69: Dream Palace and Other Stories Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea Marilynne Robinson, Gilead, Home, and Lila Sinclair Ross, As For Me and My House Elizabeth Taylor, Angel and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
If we include non-fiction, poetry, and Yiddish literature and world literature in translation, there would be many more titles to add.
C.M. MAYO: You have been a consistently productive writer and poet for many years. How has the digital revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, Facebook, Twitter, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: The digital revolution has helped bring about a dynamic international literary culture. Poems and stories can now be read by anyone with computer access. Blogs such as yours also support the work of writers and connect writers and readers. Before appearing in book form, much of my work has appeared in online publications. In the digital age, it is more affordable to publish literary ‘zines, although maintaining the availability of defunct journals remains an issue of concern for literary publishers, writers, and readers. Facebook is useful for sending out announcements of new work and seeing what colleagues and friends have been doing. I also enjoy the travel, food, and family photos that people post! I started on Facebook fairly recently. I thought it would take more of my time that it actually has. I am not on Twitter or other social media.
There’s only a limited amount of time in the day. I like to set aside time for daily translation, reading, and/or writing or writing-related business, as well. The proliferation of media in the digital age offers tempting distractions from writing. There are now so many offerings in television and film, many of them quite literary and demanding extensive viewing time.
Still, I always return to the written word. And I prefer to read in hard copy. Nothing has replaced words on a paper—the joy that comes from concentration on those words, turning the page, the touch of paper, the heft of a book in one’s hand or one’s lap. The poems “Eavesdropping” and “Luddite’s Exhortation” in my fourth collection Prayers of a Heretic explore the pleasures—cerebral, sensual, and otherwise—of books and reading from books. The key to productivity is tuning out all of the distractions to draw on the creativity that emerges from focus and quiet, or perhaps more aptly put, quietude. One can be sitting in a noisy cafe and still be in a place of internal quiet.
But, of course, there are many ways to live and work as a writer. Find what works for you and honor that process.
C.M. MAYO: Are you in a writing group? If so, can you talk about the members, the process, and the value for you?
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: When I lived in New York, I was in the Yugntruf Yiddish writers’ circle for many years. Attendees brought in a poem or a story and shared it with the group. It was a great way for me to get feedback on my Yiddish writing and to encounter new Yiddish creativity. That group continues to meet. I have attended two sessions of a poetry group here in Washington, D.C. I’m not sure if that qualifies as being “in a writing group.” Here too, folks distribute the poems, read it aloud, and then provide comments. The feedback was quite rigorous and helpful, and I enjoyed the gatherings. However, I’ve only attended two sessions since my recent focus has been on writing prose and on translating from the Yiddish.
C.M. MAYO: Did you experience any blocks while writing these stories, and if so, how did you break through them?
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: Fortunately, I did not experience writer’s block while writing these stories. As I note in the book, I wrote Prodigal Children in the House of G-d while on an artist’s residency at The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow (Eureka Springs, Arkansas). Having three weeks to concentrate solely on writing enabled my turn from poetry to fiction. TWCDH was a magical experience — a great studio, friendly staff and writers in residence, and the ideal setting that combined natural beauty and a charming, historical small town. During the afternoons, I took walks and worked through ideas for the writing I was doing in the studio. Sometimes, I took walks with other writers in residence.
C.M. MAYO: Back to a digital question At what point, if any, were you working on paper for these stories? Was working on paper necessary for you, or problematic?
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: My writing life as an adult has largely been conducted on the computer. Of course, the digital revolution has made it easier to submit work to literary magazines. Instead of having to print out hard copies, write and include a self-addressed stamped envelope, and go to the mailbox or post office, one can now submit work electronically. Writing on the computer also allows for extensive revision. In my childhood and youth, I wrote by hand. In college, I sometimes submitted papers typed on a typewriter. So I remember well the challenges in the revision process back then.
C.M. MAYO: Do you keep in active touch with your readers? If so, do you prefer hearing from them by email, sending a newsletter, a conversation via social media, some combination, or snail mail?
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: I welcome feedback from readers. I prefer e-mail over other forms of communication. I sometimes go for long periods of time without checking Facebook. I rarely use snail mail. I try to answer all letters. Giving readings, particularly ones that include a Q & A, is another great way to connect with readers.
Strange, muscled, riven with grief, Blume Lempel’s short stories, many set in the U.S., are for the ages. Yet because Lempel wrote in Yiddish, few aficionados of the form have had the chance to read her— until now, with the translation by Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories.
“Lempel (1907–1999) was one of a small number of writers in the United States who wrote in Yiddish into the 1990s. Though many of her stories opened a window on the Old World and the Holocaust, she did not confine herself to these landscapes or themes. She often wrote about the margins of society, and about subjects considered untouchable. Her prize-winning fiction is remarkable for its psychological acuity, its unflinching examination of erotic themes and gender relations, and its technical virtuosity. Mirroring the dislocation of mostly women protagonists, her stories move between present and past, Old World and New, dream and reality…
“Immigrating to New York when Hitler rose to power, Blume Lempel began publishing her short stories in 1945. By the 1970s her work had become known throughout the Yiddish literary world. When she died in 1999, the Yiddish paper Forverts wrote: ‘Yiddish literature has lost one of its most remarkable women writers.'”
Ellen Cassedy, translator, is author of the award-winning study We Are Here, about the Lithuanian Holocaust. With her colleague Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, they received the Yiddish Book Center 2012 Translation Prize for translating Blume Lempel.
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of several books of poetry, including Prayers of a Heretic/Tfiles fun an apikoyres (2013), Uncle Feygele (2011), and What Stillness Illuminated/Vos shtilkayt hot baloykhtn (2008).
Translators Yermiyau Ahron Taub and Ellen Cassedy
C.M. MAYO: Can you tell us more about Yiddish as a language, and specifically, its roots and connections with other languages, including German and Ladino?
ELLEN CASSEDY & YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: Yiddish is a Germanic language written in the Hebrew alphabet. For hundreds of years, it was the everyday vernacular spoken by Jews in Eastern Europe. While Ladino became the Spanish-inflected language of Jews in the Mediterranean region, Yiddish was the everyday language among Jews living farther north, in Germany, Russia, and Eastern Europe.
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: There is an alternative theory that Yiddish is essentially a Slavic language, but most scholars believe it’s a Germanic language.
ELLEN CASSEDY: For me, Yiddish is a holy tongue. Translating Yiddish connects me to a history, an enduring cultural legacy. Yiddish is precious to me for its outsider point of view, its irony, its humor, its solidarity with the little guy, its honoring of the everyday.
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: The Yiddish language has been a crucial tool for my literary work. As a bridge to the past and an enhancement of my literary and social present, Yiddish opens a vibrant linguistic plane, full of texture, play, and reference. Yiddish is for me a place of primal connection and, for all its and my “baggage,” a source of strange comfort. Writing, reading, and translating Yiddish also allows me to learn new Yiddish words and re-learn forgotten ones.
Blume Lempel
C.M. MAYO: You write in the introduction that for Blume Lempel the “decision to write in Yiddish was a carefully considered choice.” What do you think motivated her to write for what was already a quickly shrinking readership?
ELLEN CASSEDY & YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: For Lempel, Yiddish was a portable homeland that served her well as she encountered new circumstances and new languages. Born in 1907 in a small town in Eastern Europe, she immigrated to Paris and then fled to New York with her family just before World War II. Until her death in 1999, writing in Yiddish enabled her to express her connection to those who had perished in the Holocaust – as she put it, to “speak for those who could no longer speak.”
Writing in Yiddish also afforded a kind of “privacy.” Lempel wrote about subjects considered taboo by other writers – abor—ion, rap—, erot— imaginings, even inc—st.* Would she have felt free to exercise the same artistic freedom in English? Perhaps not.
*[C.M.: Massive apologies for inserting these ridiculous dashes but if left in plain English, which I am sure that you, gentle reader, can figure out, the Google bot may, in the Byzantine wisdom of its algorithms, send this blog into SEO netherworlds.]
But if Lempel needed privacy for artistic freedom, she also wanted recognition and worked hard to get her work out to a wider audience. Her efforts paid off. Over the years, she won widespread admiration among Yiddish writers and readers and received numerous Yiddish literary prizes.
C.M. MAYO: What do you think would have been lost in these stories had Lempel written in English? This is another way of asking, what were the biggest challenges for you as translators?
ELLEN CASSEDY: I don’t put much stock in the idea that some literary qualities can be expressed only in their original language. For me, what’s important is the fluidity and freedom that Lempel herself experienced, which resulted in the extraordinary richness of her prose. I’m not sure she could have attained such heights in a language that was not part of her very being from girlhood on.
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: As we translated, we encountered surprises at every turn—in virtually every paragraph, and on every page. Lempel’s prose is so poetic and rich that we had to exercise special care to capture her unique melody.
Sometimes we had to accept uncertainty, realizing we wouldn’t be completely certain of Lempel’s meaning even if her text had been written in English. It was immensely satisfying to work with a partner, to be able to bounce ideas off each other, and to know that our interchange would strengthen the final version.
ELLEN CASSEDY: Lempel’s narrations move between past and present, often several places on the same page, from Old World to New, from fantasy to reality. Imagine the conversational matter-of-factness of a Grace Paley combined with the surreal flights of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
C.M. MAYO: Can you also talk about how it was to work together as co-translators?
ELLEN CASSEDY: Working together was a joy. Once we’d selected the stories, each of us chose our favorites and produced first drafts. Then the other one carefully went over those drafts and made suggestions.
I was brought up to pay very close attention to the wonders of the English language. Every family dinner included at least one trip to the dictionary. I brought that intense involvement with English to the translation table.
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: Working together has been joyful, yes… but also humbling. One had to be open to another’s suggestions and feedback throughout the process. There was a lot of give and take, back and forth about meaning, the best turn of phrase, etc. Of course, every book, even one by a single author (and no translators), is a collaboration of some kind—with the publisher, editor, cover artist, designer, etc. But collaboration on the text— of every word of it—is much more so. I’ve learned a great deal from this process—about translation, about myself … and about Ellen!
Of course, this collaboration is still an ongoing process, as we complete interviews and embark on speaking engagements on behalf of the book. I feel so fortunate to be working with Ellen.
ELLEN CASSEDY: Back at you, dear partner!
C.M. MAYO: Do you think Lempel’s visibility as a literary artist, and her life, might have been different had she written in English?
ELLEN CASSEDY & YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: Absolutely. The Yiddish literary circle after World War II was far-flung but cohesive, and she thrived within it. Yiddish publications all over the world carried her work. She received prizes in Israel, Canada, and the U.S. When she died, the Yiddish paper Forverts wrote: “Yiddish literature has lost one of its most remarkable women writers.”
Despite her success within the Yiddish literary sphere, though, she always dreamed of an English-language readership. Although a few individual stories of hers appeared in journals and anthologies, there has been no full-length collection in English until now. It’s a joy for us to help her unrealized dream come true.
C.M. MAYO: What inspired you to translate Yiddish?
ELLEN CASSEDY: Years ago, when my Jewish mother died, I decided to study Yiddish as a memorial to her and a way to sustain ties with my Jewish forebears on both sides of the Atlantic. I was also looking for a home within Jewish culture, and I hoped Yiddish language and literature would provide that home. And indeed it has!
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: Yiddish was a part of the ultra-Orthodox yeshiva world in which I was raised. I studied it formally as an adult and have been engaged in Yiddish culture since the early 1990’s.
C.M. MAYO: What brought you to translate Blume Lempel?
ELLEN CASSEDY: Early on, when I told my Yiddish teacher I wanted to try my hand at translation, he went to his bookshelf and pulled out a little volume– Blume Lempel’s first collection, personally inscribed to him by the author. When I met Yermiyahu Ahron Taub in a Yiddish reading group, we decided to look into this volume. We were astounded to find truly unique writer with a dazzling lyrical style, an unparalleled compassion for her characters, a startling diversity of settings, and a daring range of subjects.
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: It didn’t take long for us to decide we had to translate these splendid stories so that they could reach the wider audience they so richly deserve.
C.M. MAYO: If you could select one short story as the most representative of her work, which one would it be, and why?
ELLEN CASSEDY: It’s hard to choose, because Lempel’s range of settings and characters is huge. She tells truths about women’s inner lives that I’ve never encountered anywhere else.
“Waiting for the Ragman” is particularly rich in its description of life in a small Eastern European hometown, including a loving description of preparation for the Sabbath.
And I have to mention the title story, “Oedipus in Brooklyn.” Lempel masterfully draws you into the story of a contemporary Jewish mother and her blind son as they move inexorably toward their doom.
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: “Her Last Dance” tells the story of a Jewish woman forced to rely on her wits and beauty to survive wartime Paris. Despite its small scale, it evokes for me the work of Irène Nemirovsky and Nella Larsen (Passing). In capturing the desperation of a woman on the edge, it reminds me of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth.
“The Invented Brother” captures the poignant emotions of a young girl whose beloved older brother is swept away into revolutionary activity.
C.M. MAYO: In one of the many blurbs for this collection, Cynthia Ozick calls Blume Lempel “a brilliantly robust Yiddish-American writer. Why should Isaac Bashevis Singer and Chaim Grade monopolize this rich literary genre?”
Can you tell us more about some of the writers Blume Lempel would have been reading and corresponding with in Yiddish? (Did she know Menke Katz?)
ELLEN CASSEDY & YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: Avrom Sutzkever, the “dean” of postwar Yiddish poetry, was an admirer, and a mentor. She was admired by other leading Yiddish writers as well, including Yonia Fain, Chaim Grade, Malka Heifetz-Tussman, Chava Rosenfarb, and Osher Jaime Schuchinski.
And yes, she did know the New York poet Menke Katz. We found several warm letters from him within her papers.
C.M. MAYO: Of those writers not writing in Yiddish, which were important influences for Lempel?
ELLEN CASSEDY & YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: She was one of a kind. When an interviewer asked which writers had influenced her, she mentioned Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, and the philosophers Spinoza and Bergson, but only in passing. She didn’t feel part of any school or tendency.
The key to reading this amazing writer is to approach her work without preconceived expectations of what fiction should be. Open yourself up to the twists and turns, the possibilities. You’re in for a wild and wonderful ride.
C.M. MAYO: How do you see the future of Yiddish?
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: That’s a big question. Yiddish is still the lingua franca of various Hasidic communities in Israel and the Diaspora. One can see Yiddish signs, for example, in Monroe, N.Y., Monsey, N.Y., and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, among numerous other places. Of course, Hebrew encroaches in Israel, and English encroaches in the United States. Still, I don’t foresee Yiddish fading away in those communities any time soon. Hasidic communities believe in Yiddish as a bulwark against the encroaching “dominant” culture.
In terms of secular Yiddish culture, a small number of families are committed to raising their children in Yiddish. And there is considerable artistic and intellectual activity in the realm of Yiddish culture – panels on Yiddish at Association for Jewish Studies conferences, concerts, gatherings, and festivals dedicated to Yiddish, and releases of books and compact discs.
Translation is a particularly rich area of contemporary Yiddish culture. A recent anthology called Have I Got a Story for You: More Than a Century of Fiction from the Forward (Norton, 2016), edited by Ezra Glinter, demonstrates the work of numerous Yiddish translators active today. Of course, some would argue that that itself is a sign of demise. I don’t see it that way. Translation requires knowledge of both linguistic contexts.
Do I think all of this qualifies as a rebirth? Not exactly, but nor do I see Yiddish as dead, dying, or even endangered really.
C.M. MAYO: Have Lempel’s stories had an influence on you as a writer, and if so, how?
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: It’s hard to know if Lempel’s stories have influenced me as a writer or if I was drawn to her because of my pre-existing interests. Certainly, we both share an interest in the realms of the marginal and the “outsider,” although we might have differing perceptions of who is marginal or an outsider. We also share an interest in poetry and poetic language, and the blurring of the line between poetry and prose. I certainly consider Blume Lempel to be a kindred writerly spirit and an inspiration.
C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you as writers and translators?
ELLEN CASSEDY: I’m currently seeking a publisher for my translation of fiction by the Yiddish writer Yenta Mash, who grew up in Eastern Europe not far from Blume Lempel. I’m excited to have won a PEN/Heim translation grant – the first ever for a Yiddish book – to support this work.
YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: A new collection of my poems is currently in the publication process. Six of the poems also have a Yiddish version, which raises all sorts of translation and design challenges.
ELLEN CASSEDY & YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB: And of course we’re getting the word out about the Blume Lempel collection. It’s exciting to introduce English-language readers to these stories with their dazzling prose and their bold approach to storytelling.
Visit Ellen Cassedy at her webpage here. Visit Yermiyahu Ahron Taub at his website here.
And if you’re in the Washington DC area, don’t miss the launch at Politics & Prose Bookstore:
Sunday, January 8, 1 pm Politics & Prose Bookstore 5015 Connecticut Ave NW Washington, DC 20008 The event is free with no reservation required. Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories by Blume Lempel Translated by Ellen Cassedy & Yermiyahu Ahron Taub Mandel Vilar Press & Dryad Press, 2016
