Stories - sources of inspiration
Through the years I wrote many stories with a wide range of subject matter, not all of them of direct Jewish content. I published some of them in my collections “Discovering America” and “Trove” (that are available from Amazon.com). I will describe some examples here and explain how I came to write them.
Discovering America: In the information sent to me by Harvard University there was a list of dates of national holidays that I should not arrive on because everything would be closed. So I carefully avoided them and arrived on a convenient day in November. The taxi dropped me at the offices of Harvard Univ. in Cambridge and I was shocked to find them – closed! It turned out to be Columbus Day that was a State Holiday in Mass. I stood in the dark arcade where all the shops were closed and heard some music and talking, that turned out to be the radio station of HU. They sent me to the International Center nearby and there I found a bed. Then as I was undressing a young woman came in and asked me if I’d like to go to a concert with her…..
Bjorn and Julie: This story is based on an interview I did with the first scientist to describe the structure of DNA as a helix, although a single stranded helix. His name was Sven Furberg, and he went to London in 1947, just after WWII, to do a doctorate with the famous physicist J.D. Bernal. In his interview, conducted in Stockholm University he described his experiences during the war as an underground radio operator, when he had to ski high up in the mountains so as not to be caught by the Germans. He also mentioned that he had enjoyed talking to one particular female contact, and that was why he was so eager to go to London. However, his romance did not work out, nevertheless it gave me the idea for this story, “Bjorn and Julie.”
The Grand Tour: This is the true story of how I organized a trip by mini-bus from Cambridge to Israel in 1963 for 10 people. Because of problems that arose, after touring Israel we got to Yugoslavia and then ran out of money. It was the interactions between the people, some of them very unpleasant, that was more fascinating thatnt eh scenery. Then I became ill and collapsed in Salzburg and spent several days in the hospital, not a very pleasant outcome.
Silences: This is based on a true story that one of my best friends told me about how at the age of about 10 he had bad asthma and was sent to a convalescent home in Switzerland. The nurses were German and tended to be very officious and somewhat anti-Semitic. There was a ward of children who had survived the Holocaust and he fell in love with a young girl and asked his parents to adopt her. They told him that they would, but then they took him home, and later they told him that she had died. For a long time afterwards this experience caused him to have nightmares.
The Party: This is a true and somewhat tragic story of an Israeli couple; the husband came to work with me as a postdoc in the US. We noticed that his wife was often rude to him, even in public , and we wondered why. Eventually she had a baby and the story starts with her ringing our doorbell late one evening and inviting us to a surprise party. ….
Irons: I noticed them quite often walking around the campus delivering mail. She was a beautiful young woman and he was a tragically crippled young man, It was an effort for him to walk with irons on his legs. I imagined a relationship between them and so I wrote this story….
The Binding: When I was a child my father told me about a murder that had occurred in the East End of London, when a yeshiva student murdered a young Christian girl. He also mentioned that the detective was Irish and it was his intervention that prevented an anti-Semitic backlash. I used this as a basis for this story….
Trove: It is an incredible fact that not one piece of writing of Shakespeare of any of his plays has ever been found. I used this as a basis to imagine the finding of a trove of old manuscripts in a library, and the setting I used was Milton Abbey, a beautiful rural place where I was evacuated as a boy during WWII.
The King of America: Frederick Calvert, Lord Baltimore died only six years before the Declaration of Independence of the USA in 1776 at the age of 40. At the time he was the most senior aristocrat in the American colonies, and was the owner of the Maryland Colony that was soon to become the State of Maryland. His death was very convenient for the republicans because there was a group of monarchists who wanted to rid themselves of the British King, but to appoint an American King in his place. Also fortunately for the republicans, Lord Baltimore had no heir, but did he?....
This was part of my presentation at WIZO-Netanya 3/2/10; for more information go to: www.jackcohenart.com
Discovering America: In the information sent to me by Harvard University there was a list of dates of national holidays that I should not arrive on because everything would be closed. So I carefully avoided them and arrived on a convenient day in November. The taxi dropped me at the offices of Harvard Univ. in Cambridge and I was shocked to find them – closed! It turned out to be Columbus Day that was a State Holiday in Mass. I stood in the dark arcade where all the shops were closed and heard some music and talking, that turned out to be the radio station of HU. They sent me to the International Center nearby and there I found a bed. Then as I was undressing a young woman came in and asked me if I’d like to go to a concert with her…..
Bjorn and Julie: This story is based on an interview I did with the first scientist to describe the structure of DNA as a helix, although a single stranded helix. His name was Sven Furberg, and he went to London in 1947, just after WWII, to do a doctorate with the famous physicist J.D. Bernal. In his interview, conducted in Stockholm University he described his experiences during the war as an underground radio operator, when he had to ski high up in the mountains so as not to be caught by the Germans. He also mentioned that he had enjoyed talking to one particular female contact, and that was why he was so eager to go to London. However, his romance did not work out, nevertheless it gave me the idea for this story, “Bjorn and Julie.”
The Grand Tour: This is the true story of how I organized a trip by mini-bus from Cambridge to Israel in 1963 for 10 people. Because of problems that arose, after touring Israel we got to Yugoslavia and then ran out of money. It was the interactions between the people, some of them very unpleasant, that was more fascinating thatnt eh scenery. Then I became ill and collapsed in Salzburg and spent several days in the hospital, not a very pleasant outcome.
Silences: This is based on a true story that one of my best friends told me about how at the age of about 10 he had bad asthma and was sent to a convalescent home in Switzerland. The nurses were German and tended to be very officious and somewhat anti-Semitic. There was a ward of children who had survived the Holocaust and he fell in love with a young girl and asked his parents to adopt her. They told him that they would, but then they took him home, and later they told him that she had died. For a long time afterwards this experience caused him to have nightmares.
The Party: This is a true and somewhat tragic story of an Israeli couple; the husband came to work with me as a postdoc in the US. We noticed that his wife was often rude to him, even in public , and we wondered why. Eventually she had a baby and the story starts with her ringing our doorbell late one evening and inviting us to a surprise party. ….
Irons: I noticed them quite often walking around the campus delivering mail. She was a beautiful young woman and he was a tragically crippled young man, It was an effort for him to walk with irons on his legs. I imagined a relationship between them and so I wrote this story….
The Binding: When I was a child my father told me about a murder that had occurred in the East End of London, when a yeshiva student murdered a young Christian girl. He also mentioned that the detective was Irish and it was his intervention that prevented an anti-Semitic backlash. I used this as a basis for this story….
Trove: It is an incredible fact that not one piece of writing of Shakespeare of any of his plays has ever been found. I used this as a basis to imagine the finding of a trove of old manuscripts in a library, and the setting I used was Milton Abbey, a beautiful rural place where I was evacuated as a boy during WWII.
The King of America: Frederick Calvert, Lord Baltimore died only six years before the Declaration of Independence of the USA in 1776 at the age of 40. At the time he was the most senior aristocrat in the American colonies, and was the owner of the Maryland Colony that was soon to become the State of Maryland. His death was very convenient for the republicans because there was a group of monarchists who wanted to rid themselves of the British King, but to appoint an American King in his place. Also fortunately for the republicans, Lord Baltimore had no heir, but did he?....
This was part of my presentation at WIZO-Netanya 3/2/10; for more information go to: www.jackcohenart.com
posted by Jack Cohen at 6:26 PM
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