Kim's Basement

Night by Elie Wiesel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is little that freaks me out more than the Holocaust. And I’m not belittling it at all with the phrase ‘freaks me out.’ Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I felt sufficiently desensitized enough by television violence to be able to gage how often I need to shake the jiffy pop and run to the bathroom before the program/violence resumes.

Elie Wiesel’s Night brings me back to my senses, makes me hate the cold hearted bitch I’ve learned to be. And not by some overtly dramatic rendition of the horrors of life in a concentration camp but more of the LACK of it. The down to the nitty gritty telling of what happened during the year that he was imprisoned. It wasn’t going for the kick to the gut reaction, more of a confused, inconceivable retelling of day to day events, and this—this— is what really makes me shudder and be at a loss for words. Hell, words? Who am I kidding? Try coherent thought.

“I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again. I would conjure up other verbs, other images, other silent cries. It still was not right. But what exactly was “It”? “It” was something elusive, darkly shrouded for fear of being usurped, profaned. All the dictionary had to offer seemed meager, pale lifeless.”

His description of his last encounter with his mother and little sister:

“An SS came towards us wielding a club. He commanded: “Men to the left! Women to the right!” Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother.”

Words. The power they can hold is devastating. Yes, not a new thought, not an original one, yet fucking true nonetheless. Buna. Buchenwald. Mengele. Auschwitz. Words, but ones that incite something within. Creepy crawlies or nausea. Fear.

I have met only one Holocaust survivor, that I’m aware of. And ‘met’ is too strong a word. I was working in a store during college and was collecting payment from a customer who handed me the money and flashed his tattoo. I paled. My eyes darted from the faded black green numbers that served as this man’s identity to his face and knew that I was just another gawker. That in that one moment I had created a history for this man. No.. he WAS history.
Certainly makes you rethink being pissed off that Sbarro’s had left the food court.

I think that my kids will most likely never meet a survivor. That books like Night and Anne Frank will have to serve as an education, a reminder that THIS, in fact, DID happen and that it is cruel and moronic and downright irresponsible to believe otherwise.

I could say that I did have some sense of relief that at least I wasn’t alive during this. That I didn’t sit back and have some vague understanding of this going on. But, that’s not really the case, right? We have Rwanda and Darfur and god knows what other insane situations happening out there—and we’re outraged over the price of an iPhone.

“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”

So, Elie Wiesel’s account, at 112 pages, serves as a powerful, undeniable, testament. As simply stated as that.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget that small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live .
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and tuned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.

And in the Preface to the New Translation, he says: “And yet still I wonder: Have I used the right words?’

For me, yes. Most definitely, yes.

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Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
You know what sucks?

When you get 53 (YES, FIFTY THREE) pages into a book and realize that you’ve read it before. That blows.

You know what doesn’t suck?

You really like said book. I mean, it’s been a good 8 months, and I was still hazy about the plot throughout the whole book, but it’s SUCH a good story that I didn’t mind kinda knowing the plot.

Liz is 15 and is a hit and run victim. She wakes up on the S.S. Nile (cute, huh?) and it takes her a bit but she finds out she’s died and then ends up in Elsewhere. I think Elsewhere could be whatever your spiritual affiliation wants it to be. Limbo, Heaven, squatting at St. Pete’s doorstep, a Quentin Tarantino filmfest….whatever…

Here’s the kicker.. in Elsewhere you age backwards until you’re a baby again and then you’re returned to Earth. The ultimate in recycling, huh?

Now, don’t you think that that is a total rip off? I mean, okay… you’re just starting to feel out who you are and then you die and everything goes in reverse. So, you hardly have time to define yourself and by the time you’re 21, you’re really nine… WTF?

Gabrielle Zevin does a wonderful job with this plot, the characters you meet are well developed and the story made me start crying on public transportation. The last three chapters… racking sobs, I tell you… Even the second time around.
My one peeve is the clumsy use of present tense structure. It may be just me, let me rephrase that… it probably isn’t clumsy, but it distracted me from the narrative and once I noticed that distraction it was hard to avoid.

Okay, I have to share this… this is when the eyes started to tear and the lips started to tremble:

“There will be other lives. There will be other lives for nervous boys with sweaty palms,for bittersweet fumblings in the backseats of cars, for caps and gowns in royal blue and crimson, for mothers clasping pretty pearl necklaces around daughters’ unlined necks, for your full name read aloud in an auditorium, for brand-new suitcases transporting you to strange new people in strange new lands. And there will be other lives for unpaid debts, for one-night stands, for Prague and for Paris, for painful shoes with pointy toes, for indecisions and revisions.”

And none of that stuff made me weepy or sentimental when it happened to me, but you bet I’ll be thinking like this when my daughter hits that age.

So, if I forget that I read this, please don’t remind me… I wouldn’t mind another go around.

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There are books that affect me and then there are books that kill me. This falls in the latter. I cried on the couch, I cried on the bus, I cried at stoplights, I cried at work.. I cried more over this book than I did on the actual September 11th. Then I became upset that this piece of fiction could invoke such melancholia. Can I use the excuse of being in shock during the actual event? That it seemed like a movie?

I have no excuse.

Flash back: The second half of 1994, my then boyfriend and I living in the East Village, 23 years old and clueless. We were broke most of the time, not much into clubbing, so about 4 out of 7 nights we would walk. Never north.. only through the Village or SoHo and eventually our meandering would lead us to the Towers. No matter what path we’d take, it was our destination. I remember many nights sitting on this ratty red paint peeled bench staring across the river at Jersey, specifically the Colgate sign, and just talking about everything. Hours sped by and we’d drag our sorry asses back to the train and to our tiny apartment. I remember nights where I’d hug the side of Tower One, pressing against it and lift my head as far back as I could and stare up until the glass met the sky and I’d get so dizzy I’d stumble back. I remember the night that we decided to marry, I remember exchanging our vows leaning against the railing staring up, always up.

I haven’t been to New York in 13 years, I can’t even imagine a New York without those buildings.

Anyway…

There are 43 ‘Incrediblys’ and 63 ‘Extremelys’ within this book. Does anyone really ever use those adverbs anymore? Is anything ever extreme or incredible enough for us? My daughter has taken to using ‘perfectly’ in almost every sentence and it brings a smile to my face each time.

The journey that the boy, Oskar, takes in this book is beautiful. The need to feel close to his father who died in the attacks, to spend just a bit more time with him. While Oskar is a bit unbelievable as a character, I felt that that was soon overshadowed by the images presented. I know I do this a lot in reviews, but I can’t help it: Lines like “Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn’t have to invent a thing.” or “ My insides don’t match up with my outsides.” and “It takes a life to learn how to live.”

I’m a sucker for a good line.

When Oskar is anxious he describes it as ‘wearing heavy boots’ and when his Grandmother likes something or in a good mood she uses the term ‘that was One Hundred Dollars’ and then there’s a whole mention of a ‘Birdseed shirt’ that I’m still unclear about but enjoy the imagery of.

But, this isn’t just Oskar’s journey.. this is also about Oskar’s grandparents and that piece is as strong as his story, sometimes stronger. I won’t go into that anymore, I’ll let you read about it.

Some have called this ‘gimmicky’ or ‘precious’ but I was truly moved by this story and combined with the images presented, it will stay with me for a very long time to come. As will 1994.