The Golems of Gotham
Thane Rosenbaum, 2002
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060959456
Summary
Part ghost story, part haunting fable inspired by Jewish mysticism and folklore, The Golems of Gotham tells the story of Oliver Levin, a bestselling gothic mystery writer and his teenage daughter, Ariel, who suddenly emerges as a precocious klezmer violinist and amateur kabbalist. Ariel tries to bring her father out of writer's block by summoning the spirit of his dead parents, both Holocaust survivors and suicide victims.
On the surface it is a story about a daughter's longing to rescue her father. But on another level, The Golems of Gotham is a wildly imaginative exploration of how the Holocaust became part of our shared consciousness, and what will happen once it retreats from the center of our collective memory.
By invoking the ancient legend of the Golem, the novel pays tribute to the way imagination is used in the spirit of repair. It also contemplates the price that artists pay when they look too deeply into the heart of atrocity, illuminating how the mind conjures both its own prison, and liberation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A. University of Florida; M.P.A. Columbia
University; J.D. University of Miami
• Awards—Edward Lewis Wallant Award
• Currently—teaches at Fordham University in New York, NY
Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor, and author of three novels—The Golems of Gotham (2002, a San Francisco Chronicle Top 100 Book), Second Hand Smoke (1999, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award), and Elijah Visible (1996, which received the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for the best book of Jewish-American fiction).
His articles, reviews, and essays appear frequently in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Huffington Post, among other national publications. He appears frequently at the 92nd Street Y where he moderates an annual series of discussions on Jewish culture and politics.
He is the John Whelan Distinguished Lecturer in Law at Fordham Law School, where he teaches human rights, legal humanities, and law and literature, and where he directs the Forum on Law, Culture & Society. He is the author of The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What’s Right (2004), which was selected by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the Best Books of 2004. His most recent book is an anthology entitled, Law Lit, From Atticus Finch to "The Practice": A Collection of Great Writing About the Law (2007). (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Appealing.... The Golems of Gotham is also a complex novel. Rosenbaum has a fluent style that can pivot and change direction on a single word, and the novel is rich in detail and vignette.
New York Times Book Review
A vivid sense of how the Holocaust, far from being a discrete and completed event, is an open wound in the Jewish psyche.... Rosenbaum writes something strong and true.
Washington Post
A book at once magical and natural.... Rosenbaum’s novel is at once chilling and warm, rigorous and fanciful, savagely witty and profoundly reasoned. The Golems of Gotham charms as it frightens and moves us, and shows a novelist moving into the fullness of his imaginative capacity.
San Francisco Chronicle
Hilarious...more touching than tragic, more absurd than abject, ... very funny and a joy to read.... Comparisons to Michael Chabon’s brilliant The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay are unavoidable.... Written in an offhand, approachable prose that’s full of lyrical pyrotechnics.... With compelling characters, both dead and alive, prose that captures your attention but keeps you rooted in the story, serious issues addressed amid humor and fantasy, The Golems of Gotham is eminently readable, deeply personal and surprisingly satisfying
Denver Post
Mr. Rosenbaum’s novel is filled with wonderful comic invention ...but there is a much more serious point hiding behind Mr. Rosenbaum’s high jinks.... If the novel is filled with the fantastical, it is also just as full of the prophetic, and it is the latter that resonates long after the leaps of a very playful imagination have receded. No review can do justice to the richness packed into the 367 pages of The Golems of Gotham. I found myself rereading whole sections for the shape and ring of their paragraphs as well as the sheer emotional power packed into every catalogue, every observation of the world.
Florida Sun-Sentinel
A half-dozen ghosts of famous literary figures return to New York to help unblock a Jewish writer in Rosenbaum's intriguing but undisciplined second novel (after Second Hand Smoke), which begins with the suicide of a pair of elderly Holocaust survivors, Lothar and Rose Levin. Their deaths prove devastating to their son, Oliver, a successful author who was already struggling with a serious case of writer's block when his wife, Samantha, left him. Oliver's 14-year-old daughter, Ariel, responds to her father's struggles by conjuring up an illustrious group of literary golems who committed suicide in the wake of the Holocaust a group that includes the likes of Primo Levi and Jerzy Kosinski, as well as Oliver's deceased parents. They quickly provide Oliver with the inspiration to write a serious Holocaust novel as they commit various acts of mayhem around the city, and their rehabilitation project coincides with the rise of Ariel, a prodigal klezmer violinist whose talent lands her a gig at a major New York venue. Rosenbaum's far-fetched modern fairy tale is entertaining, despite some sappy moments, but his focus wanders frequently, particularly when he goes off on tangents about the golems as they work their strange magic. Moreover, he never comes close to capturing the essence of the writers, and by the end of the book they are little more than literary clowns. The author's passion for his subject permeates these pages, but it will be tough for this book to earn an audience beyond readers who share Rosenbaum's devotion to keeping the lessons of the Holocaust alive.
Publishers Weekly
When mystery writer Oliver Levin suffers writer's block, his 14-year-old daughter, Ariel, uses the kabbalah and forms a golem to summon help from her grandparents, Holocaust survivors who committed suicide when their only son was in college.... With this very accessible novel full of appealing characters, Rosenbaum...should help ensure that we never forget. —Michele Leber
Booklist
Rosenbaum's latest (Second Hand Smoke, 1999, etc.) promises an engagement with the relations between art, suffering, and memory, but delivers Mel Brooks without the rim shots in the tale of a blocked Jewish mystery writer whose daughter resurrects ghosts to release his creativity.
Kirkus Reviews
Book Club Discussion Questions
1. In the novel's riveting first scene, Lothar Levin shoots himself in the head while standing at the bima of his Miami synagogue. His wife, Rose, dies simultaneously in the sanctuary after taking cyanide. Why did the couple choose to commit suicide during a temple service? How are the details of their deaths— the location, the methods, etc.—significant to the story?
2. In the same scene, Rosenbaum reflects on what may have been in Rose's and Lothar's minds before they killed themselves: God, he suggests, "had become irrelevant, a lame-duck divinity, a sham for a savior, a mere caricature of a god who cared." (p. 3) How, if at all, might their sentiments have changed after their return to earth as golems? What "proof" does Rosenbaum give for God's concern or indifference to us?
3. A lighthouse on the Hudson River figures largely in the book —as the place where Ariel finds the clay to create the Golems, as the setting for Oliver's wedding, and later, his attempted suicide. How does the story of the lighthouse, which Oliver used to read to Ariel when she was very young, tie into its role in the novel? What does Ariel mean when she thinks, "I'm a lot like the lighthouse. All kids are really tiny lighthouses trying to rescue their parents"?
4. Ariel comments that "Some family histories are so big, the future can't overshadow the past. The climax and crescendo has already happened, and nothing will ever rate as large again. The Holocaust is that way with us." (p. 42) Can you think of any major events that have impacted future generations of your own family? How has the Holocaust affected your life? What about the events of September 11?
5. Oliver, an orphan, never knew the reasons for his parents' suicide. Likewise, Ariel doesn't know why her mother left her and Oliver. What are some of the long-term effects on children whose parents have willingly disappeared from their lives? How does such abandonment affect the relationships they form as adults?
6. The ghosts of Primo Levi and Jean Amery represent two opposing views of humanity. In the story, Levi is a "life-affirming optimist," while Amery asserts that faith in humanity could never again be recaptured. How does Rosenbaum use his novel as a forum to examine these divergent views? Where do you fall in the spectrum?
7. What do you think of the fantasy element of Rosenbaum's book? What is the effect of the author's juxtaposing ghosts, images of the Holocaust Jewish mysticism and renewal, and medieval Jewish history onto the bustling streets of a modern city?
8. How does Rosenbaum use comedy in the novel? Does the Golems' squabbling, their comic actions, and the slapstick detract from the book's more somber themes—or enhance them?
9. Was Ariel's experiment with the Golems successful? Did they go too far in their efforts to remind the world about the Holocaust and how had the world failed them yet again? What made them decide that they had accomplished their task?
10. What role does Tanya Green play in the novel? She herself admits that she can't instruct Ariel on the violin. What can she teach her? What does she offer Oliver?
11. On page 149 Rosenbaum writes, "In the modern world the family cannot be sheltered, cannot save itself from itself, from dissolution and divorce and, in the extreme cases, annihilation. The family is a highly vulnerable entity, always in a perpetual state of code blue, too listless to fight back, and too fragile to resuscitate." Do you agree with this assessment of modern life? What steps does this book suggest we take to strengthen all families, not just Jewish ones?
12. How does this novel comment on the lives and works of writers, musicians, and other artists? Is it an artist's duty to confront horrible truths, even if those truths lead him or her to suicide? As a writer, how do you think Oliver will compare to Levi, Kosinski, Celan and others mentioned in the novel?
13. Early in the novel, Jean Amery spurns the phrase, "Never again," which he calls the "best slogan ever written," but also as trivial and ineffective. At the end of the novel, he reminds Oliver, "Never forget...which isn't the same thing as shouting Never Again!" What does he mean by this? Can words change history? Can you give examples of ways that slogans have been used to encourage or discourage certain kinds of behavior? Are they effective?
14. Various characters in the novel decry modern society for trivializing, diluting, and forgetting about the Holocaust. Do you agree with this assessment? If so, what can we do to assure that the Holocaust is not forgotten—and not repeated?
(Questions issued by publisher.)