Introduction to "Amanuensis"
This was presented at the AACI Netanya on Nov 22, 2009 and is also on my web site www.jackcohenart.com
It is said that everyone has a story to tell, but, relatively few of these stories make it into print. The question is why have I managed to get mine to this stage?
Many years ago, in the early 1970s, when we had our first house in Maryland and I had a study, I started to write short stories, and then I took several writing courses. You could say that I had “literary pretensions.” I realized over a period of time that some of these stories were focusing on a specific subject, namely my experiences and a personal family secret that even then I could not articulate. It was not until the early 1980s that I realized that these stories were cohering into a novel.
Excerpt 1. Here is the first brief excerpt I will read from my book, to set the scene, the beginning: “One of my earliest memories…….
It is also said that a writer needs a “myth,” well early on I realized that I had a myth, this story that needed to be told. Although there are people who had much more terrible experiences in their life than mine, for example in the Holocaust, nevertheless I needed to tell my story, to get it out of me. Ostensibly the story is autobiographical, about a Jewish boy from the East End of London, a deprived poor area, who manages to go to Cambridge University, the pinnacle of academic success. This involved a culture shock that would be worth writing about in itself. It would be like a farm boy from Kansas going to Harvard or a poor boy from Ma’alot going to Hebrew University. But, that is not the real plot. The real plot is a secret family tragedy that the boy himself only guesses at, from clues dropped inadvertently by his parents. Who was Julian? Did he really exist? But, we never spoke about it. That is the story behind the story, the motivation for writing this work, that is the myth that lies within.
Excerpt 2. About Julian p. 22 “The light from the fire flickered…”
Around this time, in the beginning, I approached Myra Sklarew, a Jewish American poet at American University in Washington DC, who I decided might be an appropriate reviewer of my draft. She took the trouble to read and comment on it, and she gave me two pieces of advice, first re-write the whole thing in the first person. Although it was meant to be a novel, it was clearly auto-biographical and hence I had used the third person tense to distance myself from the story, to try to be detached. She said that it would have much more authenticity if I wrote it in the first person. She also urged me to continue to work on it.
So I continued, in my spare time, while working as a scientist, to re-write and expand this novel. Why I persevered is a mystery, but I think it can only be due to the hold the subject had on me.
In writing this work, I had decided that it could not be written in a simple descriptive manner, “direct declaratory sentences,” not like the scientific works that I was used to. It had to contrast sharply with that. In this I was greatly influenced by James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” which I had read several years before when I was a student in Cambridge. I think this is the greatest novel ever written, and I could not help but try to emulate it in a way.
Joyce’s use of adjectives was quite novel: “The snot green sea, the scrotum tightening sea..” remember this was published in 1922!
When Bloom and Daedalus step out into the night: “The heaven tree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.” After that nothing could be written in plain text.
But more than that Joyce wrote different parts of his books, “Portrait of the Artist..” and “Ulysses”, with different styles, matching the style of writing to the context. Note that Stephen Daedalus, the hero or anti-hero of “Ulysses” is clearly meant to be Joyce himself, yet the figure of Leopold Bloom, his ersatz semi-Jewish father, is completely invented, there is evidence that during his life in Dublin, Joyce never met a Jew. So here you have the mixing of fact and fiction in an autobiographical novel.
Excerpt 3, In Cambridge p. 213 - “Swish, the curtains parted…
So I created this book, that I have entitled “Amanuensis.” In looking for a title I wanted one word that could encapsulate the theme, the real theme. What does amanuensis mean? It comes from the Latin word “manu-script”, meaning “written by hand.” The derivative, amanuensis means the one who writes the manuscript, the scribe, usually in early history by dictation. So it was as if I wrote the book from dictation, as if it flowed from my mind because someone was telling me what to write, in a way it was inspired.
I call “Amanuensis” an autobiographical novel. Some have questioned my decision to combine true events with either invented or added events that did not happen to me. After Joyce’s “Ulysses” and Truman Capote’s “In cold blood” in 1966, called the first non-fiction novel, I felt that I should be free to make minor alterations to my story to enhance the story line. But, let me state categorically that all the anti-Semitic events described in this book are true and actually happened. This includes the incident with the boys and the comics, the nurse in the hospital, my father being beaten up on VJ Day, and the man on the bus. Other people who grew up in similar circumstances have questioned this focus on anti-Semitism because they did not experience such a litany of incidents in Britain. But, I did and I wanted that to be recorded.
Now the family mystery was solved many years later when I discovered that Julian had in fact been my older brother who had died at birth in 1936 when the doctor failed to give my mother a Caesarean operation, and she was in labor for 5 days, when she almost died and the baby was delivered with forceps. When my father met the doctor she made an anti-Semitic remark to him. But, I will not read this crucial scene, I’d rather leave it for you to read yourself.
Excerpt 4 - after Julian’s still birth, p. 297 - “My mother had to remain in the ….
Since I was unsuccessful in several attempts over the years to get an agent or a publisher to be interested in my work, finally I decided now, with the use of computers to have it self-published. This turned out be much cheaper and easier than I expected, so I went ahead and had it printed.
Excerpt 5. “In the Land”, p.299 – “The Land of Israel is covered…”
Finally, I want to cover one crucial topic, was my imagined memory of Julian real, was he actually still born. On a visit to London (I used to visit about twice a year) in the 1990s I happened to be passing St. Catharine’s House near the Strand. On an impulse I went in, and found the ledgers containing my own birth certificate in 1938. I then searched for an entry of my parents in 1936, but there was none. I went to the information desk and enquired about still births and they sent me to an office and then I told them what I wanted and someone went away and brought back another ledger dated 1936, and we searched in it and found, lo and behold, the details of a still birth to my parents. So Julian was not a figment of my imagination, but he had never actually lived. My book was a way to commemorate him, a way to give him back his voice and his life.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To purchase a copy of "Amanuensis" on-line go to: www.createspace.com/3406663
It is said that everyone has a story to tell, but, relatively few of these stories make it into print. The question is why have I managed to get mine to this stage?
Many years ago, in the early 1970s, when we had our first house in Maryland and I had a study, I started to write short stories, and then I took several writing courses. You could say that I had “literary pretensions.” I realized over a period of time that some of these stories were focusing on a specific subject, namely my experiences and a personal family secret that even then I could not articulate. It was not until the early 1980s that I realized that these stories were cohering into a novel.
Excerpt 1. Here is the first brief excerpt I will read from my book, to set the scene, the beginning: “One of my earliest memories…….
It is also said that a writer needs a “myth,” well early on I realized that I had a myth, this story that needed to be told. Although there are people who had much more terrible experiences in their life than mine, for example in the Holocaust, nevertheless I needed to tell my story, to get it out of me. Ostensibly the story is autobiographical, about a Jewish boy from the East End of London, a deprived poor area, who manages to go to Cambridge University, the pinnacle of academic success. This involved a culture shock that would be worth writing about in itself. It would be like a farm boy from Kansas going to Harvard or a poor boy from Ma’alot going to Hebrew University. But, that is not the real plot. The real plot is a secret family tragedy that the boy himself only guesses at, from clues dropped inadvertently by his parents. Who was Julian? Did he really exist? But, we never spoke about it. That is the story behind the story, the motivation for writing this work, that is the myth that lies within.
Excerpt 2. About Julian p. 22 “The light from the fire flickered…”
Around this time, in the beginning, I approached Myra Sklarew, a Jewish American poet at American University in Washington DC, who I decided might be an appropriate reviewer of my draft. She took the trouble to read and comment on it, and she gave me two pieces of advice, first re-write the whole thing in the first person. Although it was meant to be a novel, it was clearly auto-biographical and hence I had used the third person tense to distance myself from the story, to try to be detached. She said that it would have much more authenticity if I wrote it in the first person. She also urged me to continue to work on it.
So I continued, in my spare time, while working as a scientist, to re-write and expand this novel. Why I persevered is a mystery, but I think it can only be due to the hold the subject had on me.
In writing this work, I had decided that it could not be written in a simple descriptive manner, “direct declaratory sentences,” not like the scientific works that I was used to. It had to contrast sharply with that. In this I was greatly influenced by James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” which I had read several years before when I was a student in Cambridge. I think this is the greatest novel ever written, and I could not help but try to emulate it in a way.
Joyce’s use of adjectives was quite novel: “The snot green sea, the scrotum tightening sea..” remember this was published in 1922!
When Bloom and Daedalus step out into the night: “The heaven tree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.” After that nothing could be written in plain text.
But more than that Joyce wrote different parts of his books, “Portrait of the Artist..” and “Ulysses”, with different styles, matching the style of writing to the context. Note that Stephen Daedalus, the hero or anti-hero of “Ulysses” is clearly meant to be Joyce himself, yet the figure of Leopold Bloom, his ersatz semi-Jewish father, is completely invented, there is evidence that during his life in Dublin, Joyce never met a Jew. So here you have the mixing of fact and fiction in an autobiographical novel.
Excerpt 3, In Cambridge p. 213 - “Swish, the curtains parted…
So I created this book, that I have entitled “Amanuensis.” In looking for a title I wanted one word that could encapsulate the theme, the real theme. What does amanuensis mean? It comes from the Latin word “manu-script”, meaning “written by hand.” The derivative, amanuensis means the one who writes the manuscript, the scribe, usually in early history by dictation. So it was as if I wrote the book from dictation, as if it flowed from my mind because someone was telling me what to write, in a way it was inspired.
I call “Amanuensis” an autobiographical novel. Some have questioned my decision to combine true events with either invented or added events that did not happen to me. After Joyce’s “Ulysses” and Truman Capote’s “In cold blood” in 1966, called the first non-fiction novel, I felt that I should be free to make minor alterations to my story to enhance the story line. But, let me state categorically that all the anti-Semitic events described in this book are true and actually happened. This includes the incident with the boys and the comics, the nurse in the hospital, my father being beaten up on VJ Day, and the man on the bus. Other people who grew up in similar circumstances have questioned this focus on anti-Semitism because they did not experience such a litany of incidents in Britain. But, I did and I wanted that to be recorded.
Now the family mystery was solved many years later when I discovered that Julian had in fact been my older brother who had died at birth in 1936 when the doctor failed to give my mother a Caesarean operation, and she was in labor for 5 days, when she almost died and the baby was delivered with forceps. When my father met the doctor she made an anti-Semitic remark to him. But, I will not read this crucial scene, I’d rather leave it for you to read yourself.
Excerpt 4 - after Julian’s still birth, p. 297 - “My mother had to remain in the ….
Since I was unsuccessful in several attempts over the years to get an agent or a publisher to be interested in my work, finally I decided now, with the use of computers to have it self-published. This turned out be much cheaper and easier than I expected, so I went ahead and had it printed.
Excerpt 5. “In the Land”, p.299 – “The Land of Israel is covered…”
Finally, I want to cover one crucial topic, was my imagined memory of Julian real, was he actually still born. On a visit to London (I used to visit about twice a year) in the 1990s I happened to be passing St. Catharine’s House near the Strand. On an impulse I went in, and found the ledgers containing my own birth certificate in 1938. I then searched for an entry of my parents in 1936, but there was none. I went to the information desk and enquired about still births and they sent me to an office and then I told them what I wanted and someone went away and brought back another ledger dated 1936, and we searched in it and found, lo and behold, the details of a still birth to my parents. So Julian was not a figment of my imagination, but he had never actually lived. My book was a way to commemorate him, a way to give him back his voice and his life.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To purchase a copy of "Amanuensis" on-line go to: www.createspace.com/3406663
posted by Jack Cohen at 2:09 PM
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