High Meadow - redux

High Meadow

The light is low

Is sinking fast

The clouds ring rising night

Circling round the high meadow

As fireflies take flight

Barn swallows dip back and forth

To summer’s mysteries

They fathom well this coded land

And what we’ve come to be

We sing their song

A breeze of warmth

This melody unclear

“If not for meadow’s cadences

The world would have no cheer”

We cry, we laugh

The time’s been cruel

Her discipline iron-bound

The meadow’s but a gorse of green

While dark baits all around

The Family Markowitz by Allega Goodman

The Family Markowitz by Allega Goodman is a "family" novel with a Jewish theme, meant, I suppose, to be modeled after such novels as The Brothers Ashkenazi and The Family Moskat.

Goodman does a great deal of work in a short space with at least six main characters.  Sometimes, the characterization is a bit thin (the brother Henry); in other places, laid on a bit strong (the daughter Miriam).  We get the obligatory Great American Seder, with a family at odds with each other over the meaning of the rite, as well as among themselves.  It borders on cliche, but does not quite cross the boundary.

In the end, we get an accomplished novel not only about the Jewish predicament in American, but about people struggling with modern problems and struggles.

High Meadow - Maroney

High Meadow

The light is low

Is sinking fast

The clouds ring rising night

Circling round the high meadow

Enacting dusky rites

Barn swallows dip both to and fro

To springtime’s mysteries

They fathom well this coded land

And what we’ve come to be

We sing their song

Of breeze of chill

This melody unclear

“If not for meadow’s cadences

The world would have no cheer”

We cry, we laugh

The time’s been cruel

Her discipline iron-bound

The meadow’s but a gorse of green

While dark baits all around

Into the Wild

 

Jon Krakauer takes what is a very prosaic tale, a young, idealistic young man, drops out of society to live purely in nature, and turns it into a meditation on youth and its misspent energies, and the American experience of nature writ large with its harsh and beautiful lessons.  In the process, he made Chris McCandless into a folk hero

Into the Wild chronicles the travels of Christopher McCandless, who after graduating from college, walked away from his upper middle class life (not even contacting his parents) to hit the road.  In the summer of 1992 he died of starvation in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan back-country.

Very much in the American/Romantic vein, Krakauer tells the story of McCandless’ increasingly drastic efforts to move away from civilization, to find that something-solid in Nature absent from normal human life.

Part biography, part autobiography, Into the Wild  is about young men who are willing to take risks, and the American fascination with the wilderness; both the promises that it holds, and its terrible elusiveness. 

Wrapped in a Holy Flame: Teachings and Tales of Hasidic Masters

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is one of the seminal figures in the Jewish Renewal movement; he is highly respected, has many students and followers, and has had a deep impact on contemporary Judaism.

Unfortunately, he can’t write well, and his books have never had the influence that he has  had as a teacher and leader.  This is certainly the case with Wrapped in a Holy Flame: Teachings and Tales of Hasidic Masters.  The book lacks a central focus and  Rabbi Zalman’s style is conversational and unfocused.  This often makes for flat reading.

Yet the content is wonderful.  Rabbi Zalman takes the reader through the history of the Hasidic movement, with an emphasis on his own religious background in Chabad.  He does take a detour in Bratslaver Hasidism toward the end.

So, if one reads this book for content, and not style and flow, there are rich teachings here for the patient at heart.