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In Print Sherwin Nuland '55MD Much of the power of Sherwin Nuland's award-winning books on the physiology of human life and death lies in the writer's ability to evoke his past "in that overcrowded warren of tenements, pushcarts, and disease that has become miraculously transformed into a place of nostalgia by a generation that never knew its privations -- the Lower East Side of New York City." But of all the stories Nuland, a clinical professor of surgery at the Medical School, has shared about his mother, his formidable "bubbeh" -- his grandmother -- and other relatives, one family member was conspicuously absent. Nowhere did Meyer Nudelman, Nuland's father -- the writer adopted an Americanized name when he was a teenager -- make an appearance. And yet, Nudelman, for good and ill, has already been a major presence in the writer's life. In a memoir that opens with a harrowing account of Nuland's year-long hospitalization for depression when he was in his early-forties, he notes, "I am trying to find the truth of my father and in the process . to finally make peace with him, and perhaps with myself." There are many coming-to-terms books that are best left on the analyst's couch; this is not one of them. Nuland brings the often-volcanic Nudelman vividly to life and makes it easy to see why this immigrant tailor (in Yiddish the family name means "needleman") who worked in the city's garment district had such a searing impact on his son's life. A man "lost in America" -- in Nuland's assessment, his father never found his place in his adopted country, particularly after his wife died -- Nudelman was also stricken with a "seemingly undiagnosable neurological disease" that left him increasingly disabled and dependent. "A proud man reduced to debility is hypersensitive to any perceived slight," says Nuland. "My father demanded not merely deference but total respect from his two sons, and when he thought it not to be forthcoming, he would lash out in a ranting deluge of anger that had more in it of impotent rage than of authority." The writer often served as the father's support when he walked. "My right arm was his staff. I could wander only so far, because there were times when I needed to be available for him," Nuland notes. "Even now, I can feel his hand squeezing my arm. I am in his grip still." His father, the writer believed, "was my imperious overlord. I would only be free with his death, or so I thought." In this, he was wrong,
but over the course of the writer's journey to the heart of who
his father actually was, Nuland has, years later, discovered a surprising,
and liberating, truth. "In seeking to escape him, I have drawn closer,"
he says, "and now at last I know that the closeness can be good."
Julie Otsuka '84 In a gem of a novel about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, Julie Otsuka begins her story when a mother spots Evacuation Order No. 19. "It was a sunny day in spring of 1942, and she was wearing new glasses and could see everything clearly for the first time in weeks," Otsuka writes. "She wrote down a few words . then went home and began to pack." What follows is a haunting account that traces the impact the wrongful imprisonment of Japanese-American citizens had on one family. Shortly before the evacuation order had appeared, the woman's husband had been arrested as a possible spy and sent to prison, becoming little more than an occasional letter and a distant memory. The mother and her daughter and son were sent to the Utah desert where the rules were as harsh as the landscape: "Do not touch the barbed wire fence. Or talk to the guards in the towers. Do not stare at the sun. And remember, never say the Emperor's name out loud." There they survived
for three years, only to be reunited and left with questions that
"we never asked. All we wanted to do, now that we were back in the
world, was forget."
John F. Stacks '64 The historic events and world figures that James Reston covered in three decades at the New York Times make up just one of the threads in a remarkable life. From the U.S. entry into World War II through Vietnam and Watergate, he served the country's leading newspaper as reporter, columnist, and, less successfully, in a brief stint as an editor. For most of this time, Reston was "wise, fair, able to speak in his own voice, and most of all," Stacks shows, "so well respected by those in power that he could find out and tell his readers what was really going on in the world." This confidant of presidents (to whom Kennedy confessed his frustration and sense of failure after the 1961 summit with Khrushchev) had come up the hard way. Born near Glasgow in extreme poverty, "Scotty" Reston put himself through college in Illinois playing varsity golf and tennis and spent several years as a sports reporter. As so often occurs in larger-than-life careers, the very traits that led Reston to such success also created blind spots. During the Vietnam peace talks, he allowed himself to be duped by Henry Kissinger, who wanted the North Vietnamese, among others, to believe the resumed bombing of the North was entirely Nixon's idea. "He was no longer an outsider with superb connections on the inside," Stacks notes. "He was a full-fledged insider, the wrong place for a respected journalist to be." The author, a longtime
writer and editor for Time, maintains admirable balance between
judgment and sympathy. Oddly though, in his Afterword about the
need for "decent public dialogue" in political life, Stacks finds
"rays of hope" in -- of all places -- the 2000 presidential campaign.
One wishes Reston was still around to comment.
Karl Kirchwey '79 Karl Kirchwey, who directed New York City's Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y for 13 years, has recently published his fourth book of poetry. At the Palace of Jove draws its title from the book's first poem, in which Virtue believes herself to be ill-treated and waits outside the palace of Jove for access to the god. However, her patience does not pay off, and, weather-beaten, she is abruptly turned away from the palace. This poem sets the tone for the book, which draws on classical sources to compare the past to the present. Gods and mortals are shown aspiring to different forms of greatness and knowledge, and usually settling for less. We see a wealthy Roman who displeases the emperor and must lose his estate; the Pope who learns that Rome has won a sporting final only by hearing the noise of cars and voices outside his Vatican apartments; and two men who start a vicious fight in a bus and exemplify "the infant wish fulfilled / to remake, with bare hands, the rude flawed world." The book is divided into four sections: "Satires," "Anatomies," "Elegies," and "Imitations." In the book's first section, the poet explores the juxtaposition of grand past and current base attempts at art in "Palazzo Altemps." In the Piazza Navona, faced with Bernini's fountain, the speaker asks, "how did they ever do it: I mean render such beauty?" The present seems to offer only lesser art, as evidenced by the man who sketches a young girl (a tourist) in charcoal. "Where her beauty leads, he never follows. / He does not dare," and the artist succeeds only in "reducing her to a commonplace." The elegies create
a mood that may be best described as "spiritual nil." For example,
in "Jump," the speaker remembers a time following his mother's death:
"On the breast of the water, the children made such bright scars.
/ Each was healed in a moment and disappeared." The speaker reflects
that he should have joined them, but "now it is too late." While
Kirchwey seems to find hope in looking to the past for inspiration,
he suggests that, in this day and age, "the prayer is in the praise."
Charles '61 and Angeliki
Vellou Keil; Dick Blau '67, photographer; and Steven Feld, soundscapes Glenn Fleishman '90
and Adam Engst Evan Gottesman '88 Joe '64, '67LLB, and
Hadassah Lieberman Marilyn Paul '87PhD Rhona S. Weinstein
'73PhD
Stephanie
Allen 1986 Kelly Askew 1988 Helen Campbell 1979MMus Jim Duffus 1949
and Dancy Duffus Stephen Robert Frankel
1970 Raymond W. Gastil
1980 William D. Geoghegan
1943 and Kevin L. Stoehr Bruce M. Knauft
1976, Editor Aimee Liu 1975 Brook Manville 1972
and Josiah Ober Pamela C.M. Marr
1991 and Frank-Jurgen Richter, Editors John McGonagle 1966
Joel Mokyr 1974PhD
Horace A. Porter
1981PhD James Prosek 1997 William Rawn 1965 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
1975PhD David Sklar 1997BS
and Adam Trachtenberg Dominic R. Thomas
1996PhD Terra Ziporyn 1980 |
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Yale
Alumni Magazine, PO Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905. USA.
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