In Pursuit of the Imagination
Nine Elusive Books
An empty world. No more hills, no insect, no life at all, not even any colors now, no shapes except the accidental curves of the centuries, no sound, no smell. The utter desert this was indeed, far more lonely than a sea of pure sand, just as a limitless bog is more lonely than the Pacific. A yellow naked body, grotesque and charred; yet possessing, cuppled in its hollows, the unspeakable years; on intimate terms with the sun and nothing but the sun, giving its shrunken secrecies daily to the sun, smelling of nothing at all except the sun, each stone palpably adoring the sun and indifferent to everything except the sun.
At times, the mood is too oppressive, and Prokosch has an annoying habit of setting characters in front of a mirror, where they suddenly reminisce about their past, but overall this novel works a magic that cannot easily be dispelled.
Prokosch wrote a number of fine novels in addition to The Seven Who Fled, including A Ballad of Love and The Missolonghi Manuscript.
Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) by Mordechai Richler
A huge, multi-generational saga, Solomon Gursky Was Here follows Moses Berger in his quest to discover the mysterious particulars of the life of Solomon Gursky, scion of the powerful Gursky family. Berger’s journey takes him across continents, from the Great White North to London, and through painful segments of his own life. Ravens, creators and tricksters, appear frequently in this garulous, big-hearted book; they hover over Solomon Gursky’s life like a black-feathered question mark, and, ultimately, the myth of Gursky’s life overwhelms Berger: whenever he approaches the truth, it flies farther away. Berger, the heart of the novel, is a complex man aware of his own failings:
Responding to the brotherly call of another dipso [bird] in trouble, Moses yanked on his trousers and hurried outside. He had turned fifty-two a few months earlier and was not yet troubled by a paunch. It wasn’t that he exercised but rather that he ate so sparingly. He was not, as he had once hoped, even unconventionally handsome. A reticent man of medium height, with receding brown hair running to gray and large, slightly protuberant brown eyes, their pouches purply. His nose bulbous, his lips thick. But even now some women seemed to find what he sadly acknowledged as his physical ugliness oddly compelling. Not so much attractive as a case to answer.
Richler has assembled a huge cast of characters and renders each in loving detail. The mythical elements of Berger’s quest, however, and the fantastical speculations about Gursky’s life are what raise this novel to the first rank. The prose, level and spare, allows Richler to both satirize with efficiency and transcend his satire. Like A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Solomon Gursky Was Here is an opulent search for truth, complete with stories within stories and a bittersweet resolution.
The Jerusalem Quartet (1979-1986) by Edward Whittemore
The Jerusalem Quartet consists of four novels of unparalleled scope and invention: Sinai Tapestry, Jerusalem Poker, Nile Shadows, and Jericho Mosaic. Please visit Jerusalem Dreaming for the full text of this section.
