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The Magic in the Words
Lev Raphael
 (Avi Katz) |
(August 28, 2000) Elly Naumann�s talent for winning spelling contests appears to be a mystical gift from Heaven � but is it?
Myla Goldberg's strikingly original debut novel offers us an unusual new act in America�s dysfunctional family freak show, blending arcane Jewish mystical texts with prosaic spelling bees that range from elementary school contests to national competition.
The four members of Philadelphia�s Naumann family aren�t alienated from one another by alcohol or drugs or abuse of any kind. What separates and almost destroys them is � remarkably � the search for transcendence. And ironically, the events take place after a marriage of 18 years � Hai (Life) in Hebrew numerology.
The Naumanns are less a family than people sharing a roof, �odd puzzle pieces, mismatched slots and tabs jammed into each other to force a whole.�
For Saul Naumann � a cantor and teacher at a Philadelphia synagogue � transcendence is to be found in the kabbalistic works of medieval Spanish mystic Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (1240-c.1291) whom he discovered in college along with LSD, which helped him experience �the same sense of time displacement and receptivity described in the texts.� This 60s rebel was fighting parents who had camouflaged their Jewish identity with the name �Newman,� a Christmas tree and Easter eggs. But true mystical ecstasy seems to always elude him.
Saul used discussion of tikkun olam (the mystical concept of �repairing the world�) as just so much pillow talk with all the impressionable girls he bedded in school, but his future wife Miriam took it seriously. It seemed to explain to Miriam her bizarre and incomplete search for the kind of supernal bliss she found looking through a kaleidoscope as a girl, and it shapes her sense of the rest of her life, which is filled with maniacal housecleaning, profound deception and theft.
Their teenage son Aaron is firmly under his father�s sway, playing guitar and attending synagogue services on his path to becoming a rabbi. But when Saul discovers hidden spelling talent in his daughter that he mistakenly understands as signifying she may be a true mystic able to penetrate Abulafia�s texts, his relationship with Aaron frays and the son is set adrift. Aaron begins to research other religions until he�s recruited by the Hare Krishnas. Goldberg does a wonderful job of making this conversion poignant and hilarious, without turning his new friends into sinister cultists.
Eliza (Elly) has been utterly ordinary until her hidden talent for spelling is accidentally revealed, propelling her to school stardom and eventually the national spelling bee in Washington, D.C. Goldberg�s descriptions of stage parents and their sometimes freakish children are priceless and grotesque.
Best of all is the intimate relationship Elly discovers she has not just with words but with letters themselves, which seem to have individual characters. Always a bit of a loner and an underachiever, she now is surrounded by new friends in the form of dictionaries and spelling lists. Goldberg keenly charts the rise and fall of Elly�s enthusiasm for her newfound talent, and the stock market-like shifts in her status that go on at her school.
The book is so unusual that at first, the mother�s shoplifting seems painfully clich�d � fitting the decades-old stereotype of the bored suburban wife. Though it gradually takes on a peculiar and almost electrifying shape of its own, it�s never entirely convincing, and feels somehow more like an idea for a character than the full and convincing creation on the page of a person in the grip of obsession.
Goldberg also can overdo the mystic ecstasy. But she profoundly understands the magic with which we can grace the most ordinary object, and her language echoes that investment. There�s an amazing moment when Saul has unintentionally scuffed a rubber ball his wife has kept as a secret talisman, and she responds by saying she feels violated.
Perhaps one of Goldberg�s canniest decisions is to cast the whole book in present tense � flashbacks included. This creates a seamless blend of past and present. At times it�s almost suffocating, as former compromises, conflicts and humiliations rise up around the characters like charred tree trunks in a fire-ravaged forest.
Ultimately, her novel is an indictment of two types of parents: those who cannot live their own lives without subsuming their children�s dreams into their own, and conversely, those who live with their children as if they were mere boarders.
This is her first book, but it�s clearly the work of a natural, poetic storyteller who understands the terribly seductive power of magical thinking, and who explores shadowy Jewish realms with inspiration.
Lev Raphael�s latest novel is �Little Miss Evil� (Walker & Co.).
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