George Prochnik attempts to cover a lot of ground in Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem. Prochnik weaves a very intricate biography of Scholem, the modern founder of the academic study of Kabbalah, with his own fraught and harrowing existence in Jerusalem in the 1990s. This is a very full pot.
The author has a good book in here, but not two The work is too cluttered. If he wrote a memoir or autobiography of his challenging life in Jerusalem, we might have had a very good book. The same applies to his treatment of Scholem. But mixed together, too many threads are advancing forward unevenly. The autobiography disappears for long stretches, and when it reappears, we have to remember where we are in his faltering relationship to Judaism, his crumbling marriage, his lack of professional direction.
Prochnik just tried to do too much. A book with less would have provided far more.
The author has a good book in here, but not two The work is too cluttered. If he wrote a memoir or autobiography of his challenging life in Jerusalem, we might have had a very good book. The same applies to his treatment of Scholem. But mixed together, too many threads are advancing forward unevenly. The autobiography disappears for long stretches, and when it reappears, we have to remember where we are in his faltering relationship to Judaism, his crumbling marriage, his lack of professional direction.
Prochnik just tried to do too much. A book with less would have provided far more.
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