Karpstein Was Hiding: Pieces of a Life [Paperback]

Martin A. David (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2000

Dreams, visions and expressionist views of reality all dance through Theodore Karpstein's hidden world. Are the streetwalker and the newly released former convict who befriend him, or the watchman who tries to save him, any less real than the long-dead family members who visit him?

Karpstein lives in the rooms of his own mind. The walls are flexible and the boundaries between the living and the dead; the present and the past are ephemeral. In the past there was the holocaust. Karpstein survived it even though he was not there. The guilt of his survival haunts him. In the present there is a warehouse crowded with living memories. Can Karpstein survive that?

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Martin A. David has published a wide variety of non-fiction including The Dancer's Audition Book (Sterling Publishing; NY, London) and hundreds of articles for publications such as the Los Angeles Times. His short stories and poetry have appeared in magazines and have been published electronically. Karpstein Was Hiding is his first published novel.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Writers Club Press (May 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595095208
• ISBN-13: 978-0595095209
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,046,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jewish magical realism, December 6, 2000

By 

"tzigane99" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Karpstein Was Hiding: Pieces of a Life (Paperback)

I feel as though I know Karpstein personally. Reading this book, I was struck by the evocative prose and how the story held my interest as it wove a tale of a person that many Jewish Americans would recognize. The book creates a world that is familiar, and yet foreign, as in a dream; it is a synthesis of the monochromatic city (New York?) with its air vents and subways, and that vague sense of being pursued that many Jews feel instinctively (and for good cause), plus supernatural elements that rise from the landscape like subtle delusions.

This novel is a work of Jewish magical realism, in my opinion; does this genre exist?

It is sad, in places, and sometimes angry; but it is not bleak -- the author has even found some room for humor. I recommend it to anyone interested in the Holocaust, in Jewish-American fiction, and in hearing a new voice with something very interesting to say about survivor guilt.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Hiding Generation, October 17, 2000

By 

Rabbi Menachem Cohen (Northern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Karpstein Was Hiding: Pieces of a Life (Paperback)

I wept when I followed this man through his hidden passageways. I wept tears of recognition. Karpstein is of my generation and I am of his. We are a generation with a secret pain. Karpstein and I--and millions of others--heard of the holocaust and the pogroms, knew of them, learned about them; all from a great distance. We were afraid and hurt and angry--from a great distance. We were and are frustrated at the horrors we could not do anything about. Thank G-d that most of us chose life. Most of us came out into the sunshine. Karpstein stands for the thousands who were survivors who didn't survive. Karpstein's flight into the darkness serves to remind us of the hiding part of our generation; of those who were eaten by the distant monster. Karpstein Was Hiding is a beautiful river of language that sometimes seems like a long poem. It has been created with a craftsmanship that one seldom sees in modern writing. Once you have read it you will give Karpstein a hiding place inside your own mind.