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4.2 AVERAGE
4.2 AVERAGE
was gonna give this 4 stars but then the last 70 pages were stupidly good
The use of language and prose to describe painting and the making of an artist made the artist's world more understandable to me than it would have been if pictures of artwork had been included. The book used one art form to describe another, a very cool feat.
I feel a bit uncultured, as it took about 300 pages of reading for me to feel like I had reached some sort of climax. The writing is heavy and slow and it was hard for me to be motivated to finish the story. The end was touching and meaningful.
Just an amazing book. Writing about the child prodigy can be so disastrous makes this precocious young artist vs. his Hasid family/community and Orthodox tradition that much greater. Most striking is how Potok made me simultaneously feel for Asher Lev as he discovered the power of his artistic gift and realize how far from my understanding of the world the artist's eye is.
very cool how the pain and trauma of living as a Jewish contradiction is so visceral in this and my life is permanently altered
I read The Chosen in high school and loved it. When I finished college and moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I found myself thinking quite a bit about Chaim Potok and the characters from the Chosen--mostly because my education Orthodox Jews stopped with that book. Growing up in Missouri, we had one Jewish family, and I'm not sure they were even practicing. It was hardly anything to prepare you for the very separate lifestyles that exist in Brooklyn and New York City. Just walking across the Williamsburg Bridge was a diverse testiment in varying lifestyles. 100 degree heat, and still, the wives wore their wigs and long sleeved dresses, the men with their robes and hats.
Asher's story takes place a little deeper in Brooklyn than my old stomping ground, but still, I was familiar with his Brooklyn Parkway area. The story, which goes through a number of years and personal changes in Asher's home life and the political situations surrounding Landover Jews in Russia and Europe in that time, was all intreguing. The characters themselves, especially Asher's mother, kept me interested, while once again giving me a taste of the education I'm hard-pressed to find anywhere else--
However, I missed the interactions between friends--which The Chosen is filled with--Danny and Ruben are able to converse in a relatable style, where as Asher is a solitary, strange savante. While that's the point of this book--I think: destiny and knowing your calling, and that callings can sometimes be lonely and heart breaking, it was almost TOO heart breaking. Although Asher gains art and experience, which you knew he was destined to do all along, his family is such a corner stone of HIM, it was very hard to continue to read, knowing as he was fulfilling his personal profocy, he was allienating himself from the only lifestyle he knew and loved.
I don't, naturally, like the idea of religion and faith as being so one-sided. I loved Asher, I also loved his gift, and I think, as a person so far removed from such an intense religion, it's impossible not to imagine forgiveness or acception--but in real life I guess things can't always be so gray. In short: my slightly negative review was only because the book was filled with sadness for me--I didn't find the joy I remembered from the first book, because it was TOO intensely hard. I think a thread thicker than the connection between artist and protogee was needed--it felt a bit two dimentional, because Asher is forced to give up everything for one thing.
Asher's story takes place a little deeper in Brooklyn than my old stomping ground, but still, I was familiar with his Brooklyn Parkway area. The story, which goes through a number of years and personal changes in Asher's home life and the political situations surrounding Landover Jews in Russia and Europe in that time, was all intreguing. The characters themselves, especially Asher's mother, kept me interested, while once again giving me a taste of the education I'm hard-pressed to find anywhere else--
However, I missed the interactions between friends--which The Chosen is filled with--Danny and Ruben are able to converse in a relatable style, where as Asher is a solitary, strange savante. While that's the point of this book--I think: destiny and knowing your calling, and that callings can sometimes be lonely and heart breaking, it was almost TOO heart breaking. Although Asher gains art and experience, which you knew he was destined to do all along, his family is such a corner stone of HIM, it was very hard to continue to read, knowing as he was fulfilling his personal profocy, he was allienating himself from the only lifestyle he knew and loved.
I don't, naturally, like the idea of religion and faith as being so one-sided. I loved Asher, I also loved his gift, and I think, as a person so far removed from such an intense religion, it's impossible not to imagine forgiveness or acception--but in real life I guess things can't always be so gray. In short: my slightly negative review was only because the book was filled with sadness for me--I didn't find the joy I remembered from the first book, because it was TOO intensely hard. I think a thread thicker than the connection between artist and protogee was needed--it felt a bit two dimentional, because Asher is forced to give up everything for one thing.
Asher Lev is a small miracle of a book, a novel about an artist’s journey into adulthood that somehow becomes more and more of a masterpiece in the readers hands as he turns each page. I couldn’t put it down in the end and finished it at a gallop. When I closed the last page, I felt as it the old library copy I held in my hands was the original Mona Lisa. It is a book of artistic calling that feels as sacred and historically significant as a master painters sketchbook.
Asher Lev is a Ladover Jew, a Brooklyn boy in the 1950’s born to two loving parents and a Hasidic community that is religiously strict and dedicated to freeing Jews worldwide and especially in Russia. His father works for the Rebbe, traveling to help Jewish communities across the country. His mother is a homemaker and a friend. And Asher? Well, he just wants to draw. He draws so much that he can barely focus any attention on anything else. His drawing are meditations, on past experiences, community, and the feelings he has about the world seen from his living room window.
Follow along, as Asher Lev’s predilection and occasional obsession over creating visual art develops into a chasm between his culture and community and his own calling. The Hasidic tradition as Asher finds it has no use for such “foolishness.” Why would anyone who wants to follow the Master Of The Universe ever waste their time making pictures? At best it is a mindless hobby. But Asher is forced into a place of rebellion, unable to wholly disassociate himself from his perspective and reaction to the world around him while desperate for his father and his community to continue to accept him. He is a devote Hasidic Jew; he is a painter. Can he not be both? It seems as if this is somehow an impasse.
If you have to choose between artistic sensibility and moral sensibility, which will you choose? He cannot answer the question.
Asher loves his faith, his family, his God, his community. Asher loves his paints, his memories, his feelings, his experiences, his artistic mentors. How can Asher choose between them? Ultimately, he must follow the most difficult path, remaining true to what calling he finds inside himself.
This book incredibly manages to feel completely relatable to artists and those of faith while exploring and exposing an entire faith tradition I have no first hand experience in but which I feel I can relate to wholly now. Potok does an incredible job of mapping out the formative years of his protagonist from the inside, giving us all the experiences of a child growing up with a family and a faith that he loves as he begins to become aware of himself. Whether trying to understand the family relationships, the faith aspects, or the calling to create art in a complexly broken world, this book is a zenith of exploration on all fronts.
Asher Lev is a Ladover Jew, a Brooklyn boy in the 1950’s born to two loving parents and a Hasidic community that is religiously strict and dedicated to freeing Jews worldwide and especially in Russia. His father works for the Rebbe, traveling to help Jewish communities across the country. His mother is a homemaker and a friend. And Asher? Well, he just wants to draw. He draws so much that he can barely focus any attention on anything else. His drawing are meditations, on past experiences, community, and the feelings he has about the world seen from his living room window.
Follow along, as Asher Lev’s predilection and occasional obsession over creating visual art develops into a chasm between his culture and community and his own calling. The Hasidic tradition as Asher finds it has no use for such “foolishness.” Why would anyone who wants to follow the Master Of The Universe ever waste their time making pictures? At best it is a mindless hobby. But Asher is forced into a place of rebellion, unable to wholly disassociate himself from his perspective and reaction to the world around him while desperate for his father and his community to continue to accept him. He is a devote Hasidic Jew; he is a painter. Can he not be both? It seems as if this is somehow an impasse.
If you have to choose between artistic sensibility and moral sensibility, which will you choose? He cannot answer the question.
Asher loves his faith, his family, his God, his community. Asher loves his paints, his memories, his feelings, his experiences, his artistic mentors. How can Asher choose between them? Ultimately, he must follow the most difficult path, remaining true to what calling he finds inside himself.
This book incredibly manages to feel completely relatable to artists and those of faith while exploring and exposing an entire faith tradition I have no first hand experience in but which I feel I can relate to wholly now. Potok does an incredible job of mapping out the formative years of his protagonist from the inside, giving us all the experiences of a child growing up with a family and a faith that he loves as he begins to become aware of himself. Whether trying to understand the family relationships, the faith aspects, or the calling to create art in a complexly broken world, this book is a zenith of exploration on all fronts.