May 13, 2005 - Glebe Report

41 Glebe Report May 13, 2005 BOOKS
By
Sharon
Abron
Drache
A most sophisticated and secular Jewish/Canadian writer
THE ALMOST MEETING
By Henry Kreisel
NeWest Press,
149 pages, $18.95 (paper)
The late Henry Kreisel's (1922-
1991) collected stories written
between 1954 and 1981 are a
welcome and important reprint in
NeWest's Landmark Edition. Back
in 1981, The Almost Meeting was
one of the books I reviewed during
my first year as books columnist for
the Glebe Report, and there's
more....
A few years earlier, I had written
to Dr. Kreisel, who was then chair of
Canadian Studies at the University
of Alberta in Edmonton. I had read
his novels, The Rich Man (1948)
and The Betrayal (1964), both in
McClelland and Stewart's New Canadian
Library Series, and I realised
that, like A.M. Klein (1909-1972)
and Adele Wiseman (1928-1992),
Henry Kreisel belonged to the first
generation of Jewish/Canadian immigrant
fiction writers.
At the time, I was studying
Canadian Literature at Carleton,
writing an essay on Klein, a victim
of depression, who had become a
recluse in the last 17 years of his life
except for occasional visitors. I had
wondered if Kreisel was one of
those visitors.
Author Henry Kreisel
Kreisel wrote back: "...You ask
about A.M. Klein. I have had a long,
silent, almost mystical bond with
him ever since 1942, when I first
read him...Whether I knew him
personally is more complex. I met
him almosttwice." These
quotes are taken from Kreisel's May
14, 1980 letter to me, published in
his memoir, Another Country
(1986). He was also generous
enough to write on October 7, 1980:
"You stood in a way as godmother to
the story, The Almost Meeting." A
fine reward for this reviewer, a
fledgling Jewish/ Canadian writer,
whose first collection of stories, The
Mikveh Man, was not published
until 1984.
In 1988, when Henry was named.
an Officer of the Order of Canada,
we hosted a dinner party in our
Glebe home for Henry and his wife,
Esther. For me, Kreisel is the most
sophisticated of Jewish/Canadian
fiction writers, probably because his
writings are the most secular. He was
born in Vienna and fled the
Anschluss (1938) as a young man,
only to be interned as an enemy
alien, first in England and then in his
adopted country, Canada. German
was his first language, but during his
internment, he abandoned German
and embraced English. In Another
Country, he addresses the
disengagement that writing in a
second language brings with it.
Henry struggled and triumphed.
English became both home and
havenhe loved reading, writing
and teaching its literature.
In the afterword of this Landmark
Edition, E.D. Blodgett writes:
"Literature was not simply a text for
Kreisel, it was a vast and intricate
system of notation, and its
interpreter was less critic than
musician. His role was to activate the
text, and through its actualization his
audience had the sense that it could
get no nearer the text than the
inflection Henry gave it. He
belonged to that line of teachers that
understands that part of teaching is
its oracular dimension." Blodgett
also writes: "While Kreisel placed
his life in a wholly secular
dimension, his writing is for the
most part a vibrant aspect of the
Jewish Diaspora."
A part of and yet apart from
summarize the pervading mood in
Henry Kreisel's collected stories. In
The Almost Meeting, a legacy is
passed from one generation to
another, while the people involved in
playing out events appear to matter
only peripherally. Stories including
Chassidic Song, Broken Globe and
Annerl explore secular as opposed to
religious faith. The fragility of
marriage is the theme of The
Anonymous Letter, with a young
boy discovering that his father is
having an extramarital affair. The
Homecoming, the longest story of
the collection, is bittersweet,
portraying Kreisel's love of family
and community. Holocaust survivor
Mordecai Drimmer returns to his
hometown, Narodnowa. An antisemitic
peasant tells him the one
good thing Hitler did was to rid the
town of its Jews. Yet miraculously, in
the ruined Jewish quarter, Mordecai
finds his mother's brother, the only
survivor of their family. Then
Mordecai meets Rachel, who is
mourning the death of her husband.
With destruction all around them, the
two Holocaust survivors fall in love.
Kreisel's characters' respect for
their parents is sacrosanct, where the
author fears to tread, except
obliquely. In Travelling Nude, a son,
rather than informing his fathtr that
he has lost his job as an art teacher,
invents a riotous story about hiring a
live female model to sit for his
students. For the entire first half of
the story, the focal point is the
model, travelling stark-naked except
for her high heels and handbag, to a
circuit of small towns outside
Edmonton with populations of 1,500
or less.
In all Kreisel's stories, there are
varying degrees of irony, reflecting
the irony of his own life. Having his
Jewish/European origins torn away
from him by the Nazis, he was incarcerated
in the countries he fled to
for safety. Yet ironically, these
countries, first England, and then
Canada, became his protectors and
nurturers. Henry Kreisel's gifts as
author, teacher and university
administrator have left a lasting
legacy to the canon of Canadian
literature. Sadly, he died of cancer at
the age of 68. His wife, Esther, died
shortly after. They have one son,
Philip, and two grandsons.
Henry with his wife, Esther
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