Customer Reviews

Old Men at Midnight

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is made up of three novellas that follow the life of Ilana Davita, who was first introduced as a child in Potok's novel Davita's Harp. Davita's sympathetic and intuitive nature lead her to act as a sort of muse, encouraging several men who have been through unspeakably painful events to artfully express their stories. I'll admit that I love everything Potok writes, but in my opinion this book is great. Perhaps not quite up to the level of The Chosen or My Name is Asher Lev, but certainly as good as The Book of Lights and In the Beginning, and certainly worth buying and reading immediately. Like everything of Potok's, it's a captivating read- I got through it in just over a day and highly recommend it.

This is the first work of Mr. Chaim Potok's that I have read. He has produced a prodigious library of work in fiction, non-fiction, and children's stories. It is for others to judge this work as it relates to the body of his efforts, however as a first reading experience I very much enjoyed it.

"Old Men At Midnight", is a loosely connected series of three stories that are related through the presence of one common character. In the first novella, "The Ark Builder", Ilana teaches English to a young man who not only survived the Holocaust; he was the only person to survive from his village. While she teaches him a new language of words, he also shares his experiences silently with his tutor's young sister via the sharing of drawings they exchange. The young girl's pictures are full of color, while the young man's depict deep and very painful memories. He appears to share what he cannot speak of with a peer via images with a child too young to understand the horror of his youth.

The second tale is, "The War Doctor". This in many ways is the most disturbing story. It comes across as a familiar history lesson at first, however once Ilana, who is now a graduate student, has this man place his life as a NKVD officer on paper, he becomes as much a monster as the man he served without question until fear for his own life caused him to run away. Stalin's Russia is no less familiar that Hitler's Germany, however Mr. Potok finds a manner to bring across the near insanity that is required for a person to do the bidding of a monster like Stalin. For unlike Hitler, Stalin spread his death for decades. He also depicts a man who partitions what he believes he was involved in; versus the atrocities he believes he took no hand in. The story culminates in the historically factual, paranoid witch-hunt Stalin invented against, "The Doctors", as he neared the end of his run as Satan.

The final story is arguably the most interesting. Ilana is now an acclaimed author who moves next to a professor who is struggling with his memoirs. In this final story, "The Trope Teacher", the perceptions of this aged man, what he sees and what he believes he sees are in constant motion. Ilana acts at times like a muse, and at other moments a harsh task master, while in the background the professor's wife lies in bed awaiting an, "unnatural death", that became another form of indiscriminate evil in the late 20th Century.

There are all manner of authors and books to experience. You will have a task finding a more worthwhile pen to read.

As always, Chaim Potok is the master of storytelling. The three novellas are connected through Davita (of "Davita's Harp). The "Ark Builder" is a sensational story that captures the emotions of a young survivor of the Holocaust. The second story concerns an ex-KGB officer and professional tormentor whose position was to extract confessions from people, both the guilty and innocent. Finally, we see a man facing his own mortality and his wife's impending death from AIDs. This is stortelling at its best from the master. Perhaps the best thing about Potok is his ability to write for all ages.

This book is not really a novel at all. It is three novellas, each told by a different man to Ilana Davita Chandal Dunn, the heroine of Davita's Harp. I would much rather have had a novel about Davita's life after the prior novel about her than have her as as the fairly invisible ear for the three stories. In fact, I was frustrated at the glimpses of her life this book gave!

The three stories are well written and riveting. I gave this book three stars, though, because the three stories were all highly derivative. It is true that they were reminiscent of Potok's own earlier writing, but this detracted from their originality. In style they were similar to the stories in Zebra; in content they borrowed from several of his other books (most notably, The Book of Lights).

Potok is one of the great writers of our time, with The Chosen and In the Beginning as true classics, and with all of his other books at a profound level of excellence as well. (I except I am the Clay, which was far below his other books in quality.) I will look forward to his next book!

To read the words of Chaim Potok is to be in the company of true greatness. "Old Men at Midnight" is no exception. Three beautifully crafted novellas with a cameo or more in each by Davita of Potok's splendid novel, "Davita's Harp," that examine the horrors of war and yet do so in a poetic, beautiful manner. A feat only a few authors can accomplish. Every work of Chaim Potok is important. This seems to be especially important now in light of the current world situation.
Thank you, Mr. Potok.

Chaim Potok has long been a crafter of stories that leap off the page into consciousness due to the vivid characters and the reality behind his pieces. "Old Men at Midnight" is no different, except that rather than a complete novel, it is a series of three interconnected stories about Jewish war experience. Each tale is finely crafted, full of bittersweet memories that the characters have trouble living with and talking about.

The first piece, "The Ark Builder", is perhaps the most poignant and resonant story in the collection. It tells the tale of Noah, a sixteen-year-old survivor of the Holocaust, transplanted to live with his aunt and uncle in New York. His aunt hires Ilana Davita Dinn to tutor her newphew and teach him English. While Noah is eager to learn, he is reticent to talk about his experiences, offering pictures to Ilana's young step-sister in place of words. When Noah is able to tell Ilana his story, the reader learns that he is not only a survivor of the Holocaust, but the sole survivor of his village. The ending to "The Ark Builder" leaves many questions still unanswered, with the reader hungry to know all that happened to Noah.

Ilana Davita Dinn is the connection between all three stories, although she appears very briefly in the second piece, "The War Doctor". In this second installment, she is the inspiration for a Former Soviet NKVD agent to tell his story of life in Stalinist Russia. It is a chilling look at the double life a Jew led as a torturer of his fellow people. Ilana appears throuhout the final selection, "The Trope Teacher," as the next door neighboor of an aging college professor struggling to write his memoirs. Benjamin Walter has had no trouble writing about his later life, but cannot recall the events from his childhood that are so crucial. While he is caring for his ailing wife, Ilana appears on the scene and prompts him to remember those events that shaped his life long ago. With her help he is able to see the connections between the events in his life.

"Old Men at Midnight" is a well-written examination on the Jewish experience, as war survivors try to reconcile their pasts with their presents. The one point of discord falls with Ilana being the connecting piece among the stories; it is a weak link, especially in the second where she is hardly a character, and in the final piece she seems more of a pawn than an actual presence. Readers are able to see the connections between the pieces without a guide, just as Benjamin Walter in the final story is able to see the roadmap that is his life work.

An Outstanding perspective of courage and integrity!
Midnight is asociated with hard-tough times and jorneys of our lives, where uncertaninty is the only location...journeys where we need to gather of all courage and dignity. So midnight is a time where interior light is the most important tool to keep goodwill going. Midnight means repression, terror coming from the side of the cruel and strong, the merciless, the rulers by overwhelming force.
Old age is a time when we have to gather all our forces to face the greatest dilemmas of life. The old man is like the young lion: he knows when and how to fight, but sometimes phisical strenght has beeb left behind, so Old Men needs to be brave to face destiny, oppression and racism.
The poem of Rudyard Kippling "The Storm Cone" (1932) illustrate this point: "This is the midnight, let no star delude us, dawn is very far, this is the tempest long foretold, slow to make head, but sure to hold". Still and however, as Jorge Luis Borges wrote: "the past is indestructible and sooner or later comes back...and we need people to recall, to fight the power of the overwhelming leeders, the merciless, the opressors, the racists, the butchers.
Chaim Potok is a clever and brilliant author who has given us three different stories seen from the magic perspective of Ileana Davita: the narration of a young survivor of the horror of Holocaust, the vision a secret serviceman who lives the opresion under Stalin and the vision of a veteran Chronist of War and Geopolitics, on the matter of the phantoms of the nightmare of war, as a major disgrace. This is the kind of Book that you are going to talk with your friends. Do not miss it.

Midnight is asociated with journeys trough tough-hard times. The Old age of a person is asociated with a time where physical strenght is not greater than personal determination, values and beleif. Being old at midnight is a crude task, specially when overwhelming powerful forces are oppressing goodwill people. Trough the eyes of a woman along three diffrent stages of her life and from the lips of a teenager surviavor of the holocaust, the voice of a former secret soviet serviceman and from the recalls of an historian, Chaim Potok has given us a brilliant treaty of those who rather face destiny with dignity and integrity, even when that mean a certain death in body, but to live far beyond to stick to goodwill values. A superlative book about an archbuider, a righfull physician and a prophesor of Torah, all they share in common trhe love for life and the gust to face destny and to fight any form of overwhelming oppresion. Ileana Davita carries on a message of integrity and inspiration. This is a must!

In spite of some good reviews, especially by Francis McInerney, I need only to add accolades to off-set the reviewers who are not incredibly riveted in their imagination. The ten reviews at the beginning of my copy come from such diverse places as Rocky Mountain News; Book Magazine; St.Louis Post-Dispatch; New York Times, +++New York Jewish Week all point to Potok's historical, literary approach!

I began with reading "The War Doctor" and was quickly mesmerized by the surgery of Doctor Rubinov. As he had performed drastic surgery on the Cossack, Trotsky, he gave extra care to our hero, actually an officers' orderly. It seemed obvious that Potok had returned to his early novels. He pictured Doctor Rubinov caring for the orderly; Possibly due to being taught the Holy Words of Hebrew Prayers. Hardly a good reason to promote him to a Comrade Lieutenant Shertov! Rubinov took the risk of giving him legal papers that sufficed for insurance back to his hometown village.

I was again mesmerized by Potok's wonderful description of Benjamin Walter in his third story of the Trope Teacher. "He was sixty-eight, and ailing. A tall, lean, stately man, with thick gray hair, a square pallid face split by a prominent nose and large webbed eyes, brooding behind old-fashioned spectacles." Again I was hooked by his mystical reputation as a writer. It seemed odd, seeing Ilana as I. D. Chandal in the driver's seat of narrating the longest, most detailed of all the trilogy stories. Throughout his narratives, Chaim Potok places Jewish characters as if they are both Holcaust survivors and members of human history and literature.

After high epectations from his greatest writings of The CHOSEN, The PROMISE, and ASHER LEV, here is his mountain peak of writing in a newer genre of short stories. They appear to become riveted into whole creations, yet also Holy Creations! Maybe they shall reach into those hearts of more and more hopeful believers!
Semi-Retired Chaplain Fred W. Hood

Three longish stories in which Ilana Davita Chandal serves as the catalyst for memory at various stages of her life, first with a teenage Holocaust survivor, then with a Jewish KGB interrogator who has defected to the US in the mid-1950's, and finally with an ailing war historian having trouble completing his memoirs. In each case, the men find it possible to bring forth memories they had buried, consciously or unconsciously. What this means to them, or to Davita, is not clear, and there are stylistic elements within these stories that I do not understand. For example, the first story, entitled "The Ark Builder" begins with Davita as an 18 year old tutoring a young man traumatized by his experiences at the hands of the Nazis. He barely speaks, and her job is to teach him English. As the story progresses, Davita encourages the young man to talk about his past, which he eventually does---in perfectly flowing English prose. There is no in-text acknowledgment of this discrepancy, and when his remembrance is finished, he again speaks to Davita in halting broken English.

In the final story of the collection, Davita is a middle-aged well-known author. She moves into the house next door to an elderly couple, who know her reputation. The husband is struggling to complete his memoirs, having found that he cannot drag forth any meaningful memories of his early life. He meets the very attractive, youthful Davita, who is working in her garden, and he is immediately drawn to her. Only later does it occur to him that she should be much older than she appears; that, in fact she is much younger, trimmer and more attractive than the photo of her on one of her recent books. Then one night he catches a glimpse of her at her writing desk through her lighted window, and what he sees is a frowsy, grey-haired, overweight woman--in fact, the image from the book jacket. Throughout the story, Dr. Walter meets the sexy youthful version of Davita repeatedly, and just as often sees the older, more realistic time-worn version at a distance. Again, a jarring story element that is never resolved.

Although Davita is the unifying presence in the three separate stories, she is mostly a mystery to the reader...very little of HER comes through, and at the end we don't even know what physical description to trust.

Despite these enigmatic elements, there is a good deal of emotional power in this book, and the memories elicited from Davita's contacts will stay with you.