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