Soul of Wood
I just finished reading Soul of Wood and Other Stories by Jakov Lind. It was published in the early 60's and was left to me, along with the rest of his books, when my father died. It's actually a book of fiction that has as its setting the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. I've never read fiction about the Holocaust before. Lind does a powerful job of recreating the times and, as one would have to, uses a great deal of surrealism to capture the insanity and inhumanity of the times.
What really surprised was when I googled Lind and found out that he was quite a literary marvel. Maybe this speaks to my stupidity, or maybe it speaks to the shelf-life of writers. Lind's book is powerful, unique, and necessary -- as I imagine are his many other books. Is anybody reading him anymore? Will anybody?
The sales rank of his books at Amazon (I know, not a perfect gauge) suggests that nobody is reading him.
Odd. Shouldn't people be reading fiction by a writer who actually experienced aspects of the Holocaust? (actually, it'd be pretty dishonest and appalling to write fiction about the Holocaust if one hadn't experienced it)
We still read Tim O'Brien for his Vietnam fiction.
Why has Jakov Lind fallen off the literary map?
Or has he? I really don't know, but I'd never heard of him until I perused my shelf of books in the basement and the title Soul of Wood jumped out at me.
In any case, I recommend this book, especially for those interested in the Holocaust.
What really surprised was when I googled Lind and found out that he was quite a literary marvel. Maybe this speaks to my stupidity, or maybe it speaks to the shelf-life of writers. Lind's book is powerful, unique, and necessary -- as I imagine are his many other books. Is anybody reading him anymore? Will anybody?
The sales rank of his books at Amazon (I know, not a perfect gauge) suggests that nobody is reading him.
Odd. Shouldn't people be reading fiction by a writer who actually experienced aspects of the Holocaust? (actually, it'd be pretty dishonest and appalling to write fiction about the Holocaust if one hadn't experienced it)
We still read Tim O'Brien for his Vietnam fiction.
Why has Jakov Lind fallen off the literary map?
Or has he? I really don't know, but I'd never heard of him until I perused my shelf of books in the basement and the title Soul of Wood jumped out at me.
In any case, I recommend this book, especially for those interested in the Holocaust.
posted by Jeff Vande Zande at 9:05 PM
1 Comments:
Ida Fink is one to read if you care to read more tales of fiction about the Holocaust. She's a Polish Jew who escaped the Zbaraz ghetto.
A good book by an American writer who never experienced the Holocaust is The Wall by John Hersey. I'm not sure what it would mean to people today but back then, it was the first book after WWII that America would widely read about the Holocaust. Some argue that it isn't gruesome enough but the characters and historical data give an impression of what it might have been like in the Warsaw ghetto.
I never heard of Jakov Lind but there are so many books and so little time...!
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