![]() ![]() ![]() The plot is bogged down by too many details of art techniques and wooden dialogue, however, and the story often lumbers earnestly on the way to its by-no-means-foregone conclusion. ![]() Potok again provides an instructive look at the power of Hasidism, building dramatic tension in the pull between the sacred and the profane. ![]() His novels The Chosen, The Promise, In the Beginning, The Book of Lights, My Name is Asher Lev, The Gift of Asher Lev and I am The Clay, have all been published by Penguin. in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and worked as a chaplain with the US Forces in Korea from 1955-57. Asher understands that because the religious community looks upon his art as the work of the devil, his professional survival depends on his remaining geographically outside of the world in which he was raised. After being ordained as a rabbi, he took a Ph.D. He also faces a crisis in his own work, and yet another dilemma when he realizes that his son Avrumel has a chance to inherit the mantle of the Ladover rabbi if the boy remains in Brooklyn under the the sect leader's special tutelage. In America, Asher is assailed by memories and surprises: his uncle had amassed important artworks, and Asher is made responsible for the collection. When he learns of the death of his favorite uncle, he returns to Brooklyn with his family for a funeral reunion with fellow Ladover Hasids. In this modern classic from the National Book Award-nominated author of The Chosen, a young religious artist is compulsively driven to render the world he sees. Now living in France, Asher is deeply disturbed by the reviews of his latest show, which criticize his paintings as facile self-imitation. In his first novel in five years, Potok brings back the Hasidic artist hero of My Name Is Asher Lev. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |