Volume 23, Number 19 · November 25, 1976
In a Universe of Ghosts
By Leon Wieseltier
New Lives: Survivors of the Holocaust Living in America
by Dorothy Rabinowitz
Knopf, 242 pp., $8.95
One splendid evening last July I was sitting in a tourist-ridden outdoor café in Florence, talking with a friend about the recent Entebbe rescue. At the next table sat a wiry, middle-aged American woman nervously smoking Gitanes and nursing a bright red drink. Apologizing for having overheard our conversation, she asked if she could join us, pleading loneliness for the company of 'literary New York Jewish intellectuals.' At once she began to talk about herself, in a random and defensive way, as if to assure us that her life had not been nearly so mismanaged as her worn features might imply, and her account had an unsuspected charm. ('I once had a mother-in-law, and her son, not the one that I knew….')
Review, 3470 words
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