I am working my way, fairly quickly, through Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev. On this coming Wednesday, I lead the monthly lunchtime book-club talk on it. I first read the book at the request of my high school English teacher. I had other English teachers at that school, but half the years, she was my teacher, and I was lucky for it.
She realized, around the time I was in 10th grade or so, that I was, as they say, “smarter than the average bear,” especially in the area of literature. So, she gave me additional homework. Well, I suppose you could have called it homework, if it had been as unpleasant as homework usually was. The format of the extra work consisted of this: she would give me something to read, and it was my job to figure out why she’d assigned it to me.
Asher Lev was given to me with a few words — the book couldn’t have been out more than a year or two before it was assigned me. (I graduated high school in 1974, alright?! I don’t wanna talk about it.) My teacher was obviously making a statement: a sheltered catholic girl with a wild talent for poetry and parents who didn’t understand, reading a book about a sheltered Jewish boy with a wild talent for painting and parents who didn’t understand.
This time through the book is my third time, and I always see something new. What helps this is the fac that Asher Lev is written on such an obviously deep level for the author that the connections are subconscious. Potok said in interviews that this is the book with which he identified most — he too had loved to draw pictures as a small boy, and had been scolded and misunderstood by his own father. He even, around the time that the book was published, painted his own version of “The Brooklyn Crucifixion,” which is a pivotal object in the story.
I hope I can talk about the book cogently on Wednesday. I hope anyone else who attends has bothered to read it. At least, I get a free lunch.
white pebble 