The Sex Life of Books

We were mystified for years. Let me explain. When we moved into our apartment in Brooklyn ten years ago, we brought with us a few books from Jerusalem, where we were living most of the time. These were the novels we were reading, some volumes about New York City in the early 19th century for a history I was writing, a detailed map of Israel, another of Jerusalem, and a Hebrew-English dictionary.

Even then we were too old fashioned to look on line for the meaning, spelling, derivation, and synonyms of words, so we bought the two-volume Oxford English Dictionary. and of course, we could not exist without a Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, so we acquired that too. After a few months we returned to Jerusalem.

Several months later still, we flew back to Brooklyn. Much to our surprise, the few books we had left behind seemed to have multiplied. We were puzzled, but in the end we shrugged. We bought a large bookcase in which we installed the books that been here before, including the ones we had evidently forgotten. The bookshelves looked very nice, but they were relatively empty, a far cry from our overflowing bookcases in Jerusalem.

We stayed in this apartment for a few months before returning once again to Jerusalem. How many books could we have bought during that time? How many books could we have received as gifts? Not many, right? But when we came back to Brooklyn, we found more books in the bookcase than we had remembered. Again we were puzzled. Again we shrugged.

We traveled back and forth between Brooklyn and Jerusalem until two years ago, when we sold our apartment in Jerusalem and moved to Brooklyn permanently. In the past, we returned to Brooklyn, we found more books in the bookcase than we had left behind. We could chalk that up to faulty memory. But now that we were here all year round, our books continued to multiply. You're not going to tell me that from one day to the next we can't remember what's in our bookcase, are you? It's not as if it's never happened before. Ecclesiastes, written probably in the third century before the current era, warned us that "of making of many books there is no end."

After searching for the simplest possible solution, we finally figured it out. After we turn out the lights and go to bed, the books make love to one another, producing still more books. Histories beget histories, novels multiply novels, dictionaries spawn dictionaries, and biographies breed biographies. Propinquity on the shelf seems to be the operating principle for coupling, providing, as Shaw described marriage, maximum temptation with maximum opportunity. True, there are some unexplained productions, new progeny left on the steps of an orphanage, so to speak. A historical novel, for example, can't be explained by the closeness on a shelf of a history and a novel. But if we've put a book in the wrong place, as often happens, that mystery is solved as well.

The books are very discreet. More than once I've tried to catch them in the act. I'd creep into the living room at night and turn on the lights, yet never have I caught a pair in flagrante delicto. I decided at last to let them alone and to let nature take its course. Books, after all, will be books.

Dancing under the Gallows

"Dad, you MUST watch the trailer for "Alice Dancing under the Gallows," said my daughter, who had phoned me just to tell me that. "It's on You Tube." Since she's a sensible woman, not given to trivialities, I followed her advice. I'm glad I did, because as usual she was right.

The trailer is for a documentary film about Alice Sommer, who, 106 at the time of filming, is the world's oldest Holocaust survivor. In 1942 she was a well-known concert pianist living in Prague, when, at age 39, she was deported to Theresienstadt, along with her six-year-old son, Rafi. The Nazis employed that camp as a propaganda device, to show the world how well they were treating Europe's Jews. Thus, starving actors and musicians performed for the other starving prisoners. Under the constant threat of extermination, both performers and audiences were, in the words of one of Alice Sommer's friends, "dancing under the gallows."

For propaganda purposes, children were allowed to stay with their parents, the only concentration camp in which this was done. Alice Sommer remembers giving more than 100 performances - playing, for example, the complete Chopin Etudes by heart - while being unable either to feed her son or to explain to him the reason. He sang in the children's choir and, with his mother's support, also survived the war.

She now lives alone in a small flat in North London, where friends visit her in the afternoon and where she practices the piano for two and a half hours a day. People stop on the sidewalk outside the building to listen to her music. Her playing of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin serves as background to her interview. Music, she believes, saved her life. "Music is God."

"I never hate," she said, not even the Nazis, for hatred breeds hatred. Deeply interested in the lives of those she meets, she loves people, she tells the interviewer. "I love everyone." What strikes the viewer is her radiant happiness. "Every day, life is beautiful." She suffered unimaginably during the two years of her incarceration, yet she remains an optimistic, positive woman, who considers herself the luckiest person in the world. It's important, she said, not to complain but to look at the bright side of things and to be aware of the beauty of life.

I watched the video shortly after listening to Krista Tippett's "On Being" (formerly known as "Speaking of Faith"), an American Public Media program broadcast by NPR on October 28. She moderated a roundtable discussion on "pursuing happiness," in which the participants included His Holiness, the fourteenth Dali Lama and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom. As I listened to Alice Sommer, I was struck by the resonance of her words with the statements made by these men.

"The whole purpose of life is for happiness," said His Holiness, who, like Alice Sommer, radiates happiness. "The whole purpose of our existence is for happiness." Rabbi Sacks seemed to agree that we were made to be happy, for he cited the Jerusalem Talmud. This ancient commentary holds that in the World to Come each us will be held to account for all the legitimate pleasures we denied ourselves.

The Dali Lama has known exile and suffering but, he said, he always looks for the possibility of good inherent in tragedy. In turn, Rabbi Sacks cited the biblical report of Jacob's wrestling with the angel. "I will not let you go," Jacob told the angel, "until you bless me." Rabbi Sacks said that he will not let go of suffering until he finds the blessing it contains.

After surviving the hell of Theresienstadt, nothing again ever seemed worth complaining about, said Alice Sommer. That she remains optimistic and good humored, laughing frequently during her interview, is a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit and an inspiration for us all.

A Time Outside of Time

I sometimes dream I'm in Jerusalem, our home for 36 years. I walk the same streets, see the same cityscape, without any sense of homecoming, for Jerusalem is, in my dream, the grounds of everyday life, taken for granted. Only when I awaken do I realize where the dream had taken place.

Brooklyn is now our primary residence, indeed our only residence, for two years ago we sold our home in Jerusalem, with its high ceilings, light-filled rooms, and balcony flowers. We loved living there and we'd be there still had our children not done to us what we had done to our own parents and moved to another continent.

We changed in many ways during our stay in Jerusalem, although it's sometimes hard to know whether the change is a function of aging or of residence in the city. Is my heightened appreciation of friendship, for example, a function of the extraordinary closeness among friends that Jerusalem fosters? There, it sometimes seemed, almost all our friends knew one another. Because most of us had arrived in Jerusalem with no family other than our children, we served as each other's surrogate family - as the aunts, uncles, and grandparents who had been left behind. Or would my friendships have deepened even if I had never left America?

One fundamental change with which Jerusalem is indisputably responsible is that it was there we began to observe Shabbat. The city itself and our circle of friends were conducive to its observance. On Friday afternoons, from our apartment in the city center, we could hear the traffic noise gradually diminishing. Stores, offices, restaurants, and places of amusement closed, bosses stopped running, and by the time the municipal siren announced candle-lighting time, the city was quiet.

Our friends often invited us to share their Sabbath meals, where they introduced us to the Sabbath home rituals, the kiddushim and other ceremonies that set the Sabbath apart from the rest of the week. With the help of a tape that my boss kindly made for me, I learned these rituals, and it gave me much pleasure to enact them in the presence of friends, for it was the rare Sabbath meal without guests at our home or at those of our friends.

Neither my wife nor I is religiously observant, but we found in Shabbat a weekly oasis of sanctity and serenity, a time outside of time, a time amazingly restorative. Now that we're back in New York, we continue to observe Shabbat. Our daughter, her husband, and their son come to us every Friday evening for dinner, when our grandson, who is being raised as an observant Catholic, has an opportunity to absorb the songs, the ceremonies, and the atmosphere of the Jewish Sabbath. The tradition will continue, I hope, if not with him, then with the children of our son, who recites kiddush with my grandfather's kiddush cup.

Recently I dreamed that my wife and I were in Jerusalem, somewhere in the Maalot Dafna neighborhood, where we hailed a taxi. We asked the driver to take us home. He drove all over the city but no matter where he went he was unable to find it. That part of our lives is over. But Shabbat remains with us still.

Surprised by Joy

Recently, as I was walking to Prospect Park, I turned to the east to check for oncoming traffic. The sun had risen a few minutes before, and vivid, long pink clouds formed wide streaks along the entire visible sky. The unexpected sight was so lovely that I gasped, revivifying the hackneyed expression of "taking one's breath away." I was, in the words of Wordsworth's sonnet, "surprised by joy." The primary emotion that Wordsworth expressed, however, was not joy but grief tinged by guilt.

Wordsworth's poem doesn't specify the source of his unexpected joy. It tells us instead how impatient he was to share it with his beloved. He immediately turned to her to "share the transport," and then he remembered that she was dead, "deep buried in the silent tomb." He castigated himself for having forgotten, even for a moment, that she was gone.

When I recalled his sonnet, my astonished pleasure in the sunrise became muted. I'd tell my wife about the sunrise when I returned from my walk. She'd listen, understand, and enter into my pleasure. But before too long, one of us will be in Wordsworth's position, bereft, yet still wanting to tell the other something.

For years after my mother died, I caught myself wanting to phone her about something, before remembering that she was dead. She's been gone now for almost 60 years, and I no longer find myself wanting to phone her. My father, though, who died a little more than 30 years ago, is a different story. I occasionally find myself wanting to tell him my news. "I must tell Dad," I think to myself and then I remember that of course I cannot. But the impulse to talk to him has become less frequent with time, and were I to live long enough, it would probably die out completely, as it did with the urge to talk to my mother.

Neither my wife nor I is likely to live long enough, after the inevitable bereavement one of us will face, to stop wanting to tell the other something, before a sudden pained realization that the time for sharing is over. After that astonishing sunrise, my recollection of Wordsworth's sonnet made me promise myself to treasure the time we still have together.

Stepping Outside the Box

Not the least of the pleasures afforded by The New York Times are its obituaries. No, reading the obituaries is not a morbid indulgence. Those of you who have read them - articles that summarize the lives of notable people who have recently died - know that they are often both witty and instructive and sometimes inspiring as well.

One of the most remarkable people who've had the distinction of a Times obituary was Richard T. Gill, who died recently at the age of 82. When he was almost forty and a tenured professor of economics at Harvard, he managed to break his two and a half pack addiction to cigarettes. In order to help himself stay clean, he took singing lessons. Without any prior formal training, he had nonetheless always liked to sing, but after a few years of lessons and rigorous practice, it became clear that he was a world-class basso profundo. "Mr. Gill soon forsook chalk and tweed for flowing robes and very large headgear."

The author of tomes such as Economics and the Private Interest: an introduction to microeconomics became a featured player, first at the New York City Opera and soon after at the Met, where he performed 42 times. His obituary, by Margalit Fox, quoted John Rockwell's review of Prof. Gill's 1975 performance as Pimen, in Boris Godunov. "He has one of the most beautiful, focused lyric bases around, mellow yet with a really black quality, and his shaping of this noble music was most persuasive."

One could die happy after a review like that, but I'm glad to say that he waited another 35 years. His career as an opera singer spanned 14 years, a period in which he continued to publish books on economics. He then returned to academic life, but instead of continuing with economics, he ventured into demographics, writing Our Changing Population, with Nathan Glazer and Stephan A. Thernstrom, and Posterity Lost: progress, ideology, and the decline of the American family.

As if this versatility were not impressive enough, before embarking on his career in opera, Prof. Gill published short stories in The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. Later he hosted a 28-part television series on economics. Most of us, who are pleased if we can succeed in even one field, read such an obituary in wonder and awe at what's humanly possible if so rarely attained. Prof. Gill might at least have had the good grace to be homely, but he didn't oblige us even in that. The two photographs published with his obituary, one of them in the role of Frere Laurent in Romeo et Juliette at the Met in 1974, show a handsome man. This was hardly fair.

Few can aspire to such distinction. Still, Prof. Gill showed us what's possible when we have the courage to step outside the boxes that we create for ourselves.

Appearances

For the past three years I've participated in a longitudinal study at a New York hospital. Every few months I report to an office, where I'm given a blood test, an interview by a nurse-practitioner, and finally an exam by the doctor running the project.

Recently I returned to the hospital for this routine drill. The nurse-practitioner, a sturdy, balding, unsmiling man with a no-nonsense manner, who had interviewed me once before, asked me the same questions he had asked me the last time, the same questions I'd been asked for the past three years. But after asking the usual questions - about, for example, appetite, the frequency of bowel movements and urination, and the presence or absence of pain, he asked me a new question. "Can you take care of yourself?"

Bewildered, I asked him what he meant. "Can you dress yourself, bathe yourself, and eat without assistance?" Stunned, I answered, "so far." I had walked with him from the waiting room to the examination room. Hadn't he noticed my firm tread? Did he believe that it was even remotely possible that I could not perform any of those functions? True, I'm a bit bent now and I'm only a few weeks shy of my 79th birthday, but there are centenarians who can feed and bathe themselves and go to the bathroom without help.

Still, the nurse-practitioner was asking what he considered to be an appropriate question. During the past few months I must have crossed an invisible threshold. Will I have crossed another before my next visit? Will he want to know if I can tell him that day's date or name the president of the United States? After all, I'm just as likely to be no longer compos mentis as that someone will have to feed me, perhaps even more likely.

His question reminded me of the frequent lack of correspondence between our perception of ourselves and the impression we make on others. When I strode into the waiting room, dressed in a new tweed sports jacket and a snazzy bow tie, I had seen myself as a fine figure of a man. After the interview I saw what the nurse-practitioner had seen, an old man in danger of losing it.

From now on, I hope I remember that interview when I start to think disparagingly about people who dress or groom themselves in an unbecoming manner. Up until now, I would wonder if they understood how they looked. But now I realize that of course they don't. That heavy woman thinks that her tight jeans makes her look thinner. That old lady thinks that her bright lipstick, plunging neckline, and mini-skirt make her look younger. That man with the comb over thinks that no one will notice he's almost bald. That guy who's never changed the size of his belt and now wears it under a great bulge in his stomach thinks that people won't notice his girth. But what harm are these illusions? Isn't it better that these folks see themselves as looking good than to know the truth? I wish I could still think of myself as a fine figure of a man. But who would be fooled? As I came home, a middle-aged stranger, sitting on a packing crate in front of a convenience store, called out to me, "How y'doin', Pop?"

A Man from Yonkers

He was sitting across from me at the doctor's office. Perhaps 10 years younger than I, he looked as if he might be a retired banker, although he was reading the Post rather than the Times or the Wall Street Journal. A tall, trim, good-looking man, he boasted a full head of white hair, and his shoes, which were beautifully shined, looked expensive. We had to leave the office at the same time, and as walked together out onto the street and towards our respective subway stations at Columbus Circle we struck up a conversation.

We agreed in praising our doctor for his patience, kindness, and good humor. As my companion spoke I concluded that banking was an unlikely profession for someone with his accent, which seemed to me to be uneducated. He lives in Yonkers, he said, in the cooperative apartment that he and his mother had shared until her death. He wears no wedding band, so I guessed that he's probably a life-long bachelor. Indeed, although he's not at all effeminate, he exhibits the slight fussiness that's seen in many men who have never married.

Perhaps he's lonely. At any rate, he kept up an almost continuous stream of chatter, as I said very little, maintaining eye contact, nodding and inserting an occasional comment to show that I understood what he was saying. He seemed grateful for an attentive listener.

Among the facts I learned about him are that he avoids sodium, especially as found in processed foods, but that he makes one exception. He cannot eat corn on the cob without salt. We discussed healthy eating, ending that topic when he asserted that no matter what he ate, when the Lord was ready to take him, he'd have to go. He seems to be doing his best, however, to help the Lord postpone that invitation, since he doesn't smoke, avoids fatty meats and sodium (except for corn on the cob), and, judging from the absence of visible small veins on and around his nose, doesn't drink heavily.

He's an enthusiastic Yankees fan and used to attend lots of ball games with his friends. Nowadays, though, he wouldn't dream of attending a game because of what he views as the exorbitant cost of a ticket. That's bad enough, he said, but you can no longer bring food or drink into the stadium, leaving you at the mercy of ridiculous prices for a hot dog and beer. Seats used to be inexpensive enough that whole families would attend games together, he told me, and they'd bring a full picnic hamper with them. Now he only watches the games on television. He didn't seem optimistic that the Yankees would win the pennant, although if they managed to win the next two games, they'd have done it once again.

"Do you remember Phil Rizzuto?" he asked. "Sure," I said, not telling him that I knew only that he was an old-time baseball player, but that I had no idea what he team he'd played for. (Later, a Google search told me that he was an outstanding Yankee short stop in the '40s and '50s.) His salary was only $35,000, my friend told me. We agreed that $35,000 was not a shabby salary in the '40s and '50s, but that even if you multiplied it by 10, it would represent small change for today's millionaire major league players. We both thought this crazy.

We had been chatting as we walked up 59th Street and were now on the corner of Ninth Avenue, where we stopped. I knew he had to cross the avenue in order to reach his subway at Columbus Circle, but he made no move to do so. He continued to talk. Finally, eager to avoid the subway rush hour, I asked him if he was going to cross the street. We crossed together, but before I could say something to end the conversation in a way that would not hurt his feelings, he said that he wouldn't keep me much longer, but that he had to tell me a story.

When he was younger, he said, he had some friends who were Giants fans. Once these friends went to Ebbets Field to watch the Giants play the Dodgers. His friends were only a few blocks from the field, but they didn't know how to reach it. They approached a policeman and asked for directions. "Who are you rooting for?" he asked. Later they realized that it was a mistake to have told him, because he sent them in the wrong direction, taking them out of their way by one or two miles.

But even after telling me that story, he did not stop talking. He continued to touch on a miscellaneous array of topics for at least another five minutes. I could see that he was reluctant to lose a good listener, and I was curious how long he could keep up his stream of talk, but I didn't want to get home late, and so I told him (truthfully) how much I had enjoyed talking to him, and then we both said goodbye and wished each other good luck.