the tender libertine
bookseller, immigrant, swamp hag
What I'm Reading Now
I'm finally reading my second Bashevis Singer, The Magician of Lublin this time! I have a Penguin Modern Classics edition and a handsome Hungarian paperback I found in one or another second-hand store back in Budapest. It seems to be easy to happen upon Yiddish novels in these shops, I found both cheap volumes designed to fit a coat pocket and beautifully illustrated novelty hardbacks buried under the piles and piles of socialis-era pulp fiction. Last year I read Satan in Goray, and it cemented Singer as one of my favourite authors. His writing is all-encompassing, poignant and really heavy. A bit like Ričardas Gavelis or Imre Kertész. Satan in Goray is about the messianic zeal that sweeps through 17th-century Poland right after the Khmelnytsky Uprising that according to today's scholarship based on contemporary Jewish chronicles claimed about 100,000 Jewish lives.
After a period of extreme terror, the Jews of Goray are divided into two sects, those who follow the advice of their respected rabbi and "don't force the end" and those who follow the messianic pretender Sabbatai Tzvi. The reason the novel is so heavy is the extraordinary insight the reader is given into the emotional, social and religious processes of a small, medieval Jewish community of an Eastern Europe that was bathed in blood by the Ottoman occupation, the Cossack Hetmanate, antisemitism, Crimean Tatars and counter-reformation. In this world, disease, heavenly punishment, witches and massacres are equally real forces of life, and for a brief second we get a peculiar insight into how medieval people seeked happiness, power and peace as well as just how profoundly antisemitic violence shaped the lives and psyches of many.
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“The melodious, too soft-strung Racine, when his King turned his back on him, emitted one meek wail, and submissively—died.”
Antal Szerb
Latest Reads
Just before the bookstore I work at closed to abide by the lockdown regulations, one of my colleagues lent my Alison Blechdel's Essential Dykes to Watch Out For. I've already read Fun Home and loved it to pieces, and Dykes is no different. I guess one of the perils of being a bookseller is staying on top of the deluge of book recommendations supplied by lovely coworkers, book bloggers and the endless string of customers
A testament to Blechdel's genius, the Dykes comics are a chronicle of the life of a group of lesbians; academics, social-workers and booksellers negotiating their professional lives, dating and family matters over the course of 20 years. Mo, Ginger, Lois and indeed all characters are so well-sustained that after but a couple of pages, one finds herself yearning to joing them in Cafe Topaz.
I've just recently started David Olusoga's Black and British, an absolute community favourite in the bookshop I work at, and I'm also reading Antal Szerb's History of Hungarian Literature, a similarly beloved volume among readers at home. What unites the two, is that both of them are packed with a staggering amount of names, records, testimonies, titles and dates, but both manage to stay easy to follow and just beyond exciting.
Having grown up outside of Britain, I collected most of my historical knowledge from books not unlike Black and British. It provides a large scope of history while bringing together many forgotten individuals and insights while remaining eminently readable. I especially like the author's emotional involvement, that carries this often difficult history into the modern age transforming knowledge into compassion and activism.
I have somewhat randomly happened upon Inara Verzemnieks' harrowing memoir on war, family and homecoming, Among the Living and the Dead while shelving in the bookstore. It's a story of two sisters, Livija and Ausma being separated at the outbreak if WW2 in Latvia. The two doesn't see each other for about fifty years, after which Livija's granddaughter decides to carefully piece together her family's soaring saga of refugee survival, belonging and occupation.
Because of the lyrical, spellbinding prose, the book is written with, I'm somewhat disappointed in myself having not discovered this book before finishing my dissertation. There are exquisitely written passages on shared Eastern European trauma, resilience and loss I could have used to underline bits of the text being weighed down by theory or explanations of historical framework.
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