Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of the new story collection Prodigal Children in the House of G-d. His other books include The Education of a Daffodil and Prayers of a Heretic. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in your
new collection, and do you see common themes running through them?
A: The bulk of the first draft of this book was written
during an artist's residency at The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka
Springs, Arkansas in October and November 2015.
This was a period of intense concentration and creative
transformation. Having a significant block of uninterrupted writing time
enabled my transition from poetry to prose.
I find that prose requires more time than poetry, not merely
to write more words, but to map out the narrative arc of the stories (and the
collection) as well as the journeys of the characters.
I may not know that arc beforehand, but each step requires
care, consideration, and connectivity to the next. I continued to edit, rework,
and wordsmith the stories for several additional years.
I do see common themes in the stories. All of them involve
characters on or perilously near the margins — whether through
choices made (Beyle in "Flowers for Madame"), actions taken against
them (Khane Leventhal in "Night in the Solarium" and "Phoenix,
With Hat"), or because of the self seen as transgressive (Efroyem in
"Love in the Red").
All of the characters navigate, in different ways, issues of
home, waywardness, parental disapproval, and exile. The book, as a whole, is
concerned with liberation on a small scale —how to survive meaningfully in
a world that often seems indifferent or cruel.
Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify
for you?
A: The online Cambridge Dictionary defines
"prodigal son" as "a man or boy who has left his family in order
to do something that the family disapprove of and has now returned home feeling
sorry for what he has done." Prodigal is also defined as "wasteful,
extravagant, spendthrift" as well as "generous, lavish, liberal,
unstinting, and unsparing."
The characters in this collection move in the realm of
prodigality, although none are exactly prodigal per se. Certainly, few of them
have much money to spend extravagantly. On the contrary, most eke out
threadbare existences. In addition, most are not particularly sorry for what they
have done.
And yet there is an emotional extravagance, or
expansiveness, in the protagonists' unsparing commitment to a vision, sometimes
only just beginning to be glimpsed. So despite the lack of exact parallelism,
"prodigal," with its echoes of moral seriousness and familial rupture
as well as its broad recognizability, seemed to be an apt title
word.
"The House of G-d" is similarly purposeful. I
liked the intimacy involved in the concept of house as well as the multiple
uses of house in Jewish tradition (e.g. bet ha-midrash/house of
study, bet ha-keneset/house of prayer, etc.).
Similarly, "G-d" rather than "God"
refers to the Orthodox tradition of avoiding erasure of God's name. Put another
way, we should not erase or destroy God's name and should avoid writing it.
Most rabbinic authorities agree that this applies only when
God is written in Hebrew and not in other languages. But growing up in the
Orthodox world, I remember seeing "G-d."
Q: The 10 stories are divided into two sections: "Daughters"
and "Sons." How did you decide on the organization of the collection?
A: If the "prodigal son" mentioned above was an
original inspiration, I sought to widen the narrative framework. I decided to
write about female and male children, and to open with daughters.
As the themes of the collection emerged, the overall
architecture became clear. Some might consider this division to be an example
of "separate seating" as in a synagogue or perhaps a riff
on/subversion of that division ... My goal was to explore these themes in
discrete sections to see how gender plays (or does not play) a central role,
rather than reinscribe gender separation.
Q: Some of the characters appear in more than one story. Did
you plan the collection that way, or was it more spontaneous?
A: Yes, the collection includes two sets of interlocking
stories. A story in each set begins and ends each of the two sections of the
book. I wanted the stories to stand on their own as distinct narratives and
link up with other stories. The aspect of connectivity allowed multiple
viewings of the protagonists, albeit from different angles.
And I wanted there to be considerable "narrative
space" between each of the paired stories so that the reader moves on to
other characters, returning only later to a character previously encountered. I
didn't plan it that way exactly at the outset; the trajectory became clear to
me as the writing progressed.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am a 2018-2019 Translation Fellow at the Yiddish Book
Center, where I am translating three memoirs by Rachmil Bryks (1912-1974), a
poet and prose writer, a fiction writer and a memoirist.
Bryks masterfully depicts Jewish life in a shtetl in
pre-Holocaust Poland as well as his experiences during the approach of war and
the Holocaust. The translation program is wonderful, and the process of
translation is endlessly stimulating.
Both writing and translation require a process of radical
listening. As a writer, I listen to my characters; as a translator, I try to be
aware of the writer's ghostly presence, to get as close as possible to
authorial intentionality and then to usher those words into another language.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I think of writing fiction as a way to spend more time
with characters than I do in my poetry. But I don't think of poetry and fiction
as utterly separate enterprises. My poetry has often been narrative and
prose-y, and my prose is often focused on the interior lives of my characters
and is complete with poetic passages.
In the end, I aim to follow the muse, to see where the
character goes or wants to go, rather than be concerned about the genre in
which s/he "belongs."
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Yermiyahu Ahron Taub.
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