Read Old Men at Midnight Online
Authors: Chaim Potok
DW: Perhaps I missed this but I think “The Ark Builder” and “The War Doctor” were written in the last decade, after “The Trope Teacher,” which was published first in 1992, in Holland, then it was published in the
TriQuarterly
in 1997–98. Can you explain the way or ways in which these came about?
CP: Yes you are correct. I wrote “The Trope Teacher” first. The other two represented a prequel to the first. I worked backward. “The Trope Teacher” by the way, came out of nothing. I created it out of nothing. It had no relation to a previous work.
In “The Arc Builder” the drawings and the art and the architecture are concerned with the traditional artists, that is, the people who have significantly cut across lines. Stremin, in “The Arc Builder,” had nothing and might now have something, a memory of the “old world.”
DW: Why is it Rachel, the younger sister, who succeeds in drawing Noah Stremin out? Or was it the primate house’s smells? In “The War Doctor” did the story come out of your previous book on the Soviet Union? When you wrote “Without stories there is nothing,” the doctor sent her stories. Then she asked “Are you a religious Jew?” Explain
.
CP: In fact Davita had too many things attached to the “old world,” so it had to be Rachel who would draw Stremin out. The primate house’s primary smells reminded him of the concentration camp. Beside them everything else was blurred. In “The War Doctor” Shertov came out of nothing, he was an invented character. As for the question, “Are you a religious Jew?” It was meant to catch you up. It is important to remember that he could not save him. He could not worry about it because so much time had elapsed and in those days, in Soviet Russia you didn’t care about the consequences.
DW: In general, your writing has invoked the redemptive voice, it has stood for restoration, for regenerating Judaism and the Jewish people. Is that view consistent with your belief, with Emil Fackenheim, that the
alternative to Jewish commitment is to say that Hitler succeeded, that everybody died for nothing?”
CP: Yes indeed. Fackenheim successfully had the Jew take two alternatives: either take the redemptive step, or take the non-redemptive step. That doesn’t mean, of course, you have to take the religious stance, but it would be a normal and ethical stance.
Yes, that uncertainty comes from the suffering that he has experienced and leads, in turn, to his certainty. He says to himself, I cannot have gone through what I went through and have lost what I lost if it’s all meaningless. Therefore, the very experience serves to reinforce his commitment to the past. The alternative is to say that Hitler succeeded, that everybody really died for nothing. That reinforces his certainty. At the same time, he has lost his whole world. He is in a strange, bewildering world here. He is listening to the music of that past world. And somehow he manages to find it.
DW: Some critics have written that they don’t admire your so-called simple style. You have contended that your writing is a result of much rewriting and much revision and is deliberate
.
CP: The style is simplicity for the sake of complexity. Whoever feels that it is a “simple style” has to look into it and find the right way. Of course the style has become over the years much more complex and much more simple.
Two fundamental things about the novel continue to intrigue me and I think this is our gift to ourselves as far as this form is concerned. One is the handling of character, people. No other form can handle people in significant depth over long periods of time. No other form can move back and forth, in and out, nothing can move the way the novel can in terms of the dimension of time. People and time are what I think the novel is really all about and I think they are limitless.
Reading Group Questions
and Topics for Discussion
The Ark Builder
1. Is there a reason to connect Noah with the Biblical story of the ark? Given that water is not present in the story, what then is the metaphor of the flood?
2. Noah says to Rachel, “You have pictures, I have nothing.” What does he mean by this and what is its significance?
3. Why wouldn’t Noah draw his house when first asked? What is it about Rachel that was finally able to get him to draw?
The War Doctor
1. When Davita urges Leon Sherov to write his war stories down, he asks her, “Who needs stories of yet another Jew?” What is her answer? How would you have convinced him to tell his stories?
The Trope Teacher
1. Davita says to Benjamin, “Memory is like a ball of wooden thread, Benjamin. If the pen cannot unravel it, the voice can.” What do you think she means by this statement?
2. The ram is a central metaphor in this story. Davita says, “I believe there is always a ram in the bush.”
Later on she comments, “Causes, connections, and rams. All over the place.” What is the connection between these words and the long story that Benjamin finally learns about Mr. Zapiski?
To the Family
Adena
Rena
Naama
Akiva
Bill
ALSO BY CHAIM POTOK
Novels
The Chosen
(1967
)
The Promise
(1969
)
My Name Is Asher Lev
(1972
)
In the Beginning
(1975
)
The Book of Lights
(1981
)
Davita’s Harp
(1985
)
The Gift of Asher Lev
(1990
)
I Am the Clay
(1992
)
Nonfiction
Wanderings: Chaim Potok’s
History of the Jews
(1978
)
The Gates of November
(1996
)
Plays
Out of the Depths
(1990
)
The Play of Lights
(1992
)
The Chosen (with Aaron Posner
, 1999
)
Children’s Literature
The Tree of Here
(1993
)
The Sky of Now
(1995
)
Zebra and Other Stories
(1998
)
Chaim Potok, trained as a rabbi and an editor, became an international success with his beloved first novel,
The Chosen
, and over the following thirty-odd years gave us many other memorable works, both fiction and nonfiction. He died in 2002 at age 73.