What to write about?

I had the privilege of introducing Gigi Fenster's talk yesterday. Gigi is the author of the book Feverish, a book described as a memoir, because you have to know what shelf to put the book on in a library and bookshop, but it is not a memoir in the sense of it being an account of the author's life. It is a meditation on life, on family, friends, the medical history of understanding fever, the history of psychiatry and many other topics, but it is also a meditation on what a writer should write about when she faces writer's block. So Gigi's challenge was to explore what is fever, what people understood by the term over the centuries. She came across Julius Wagner- Jauregg, a now fortunately largely forgotten Austrian physician and psychiatrist who won the Noble Prize for what we know now as a totally misguided treatment of mental illness. In his time, however, Wagner-Jauregg was highly regarded, as were his ideas on euthanasia, National Socialism, and other beliefs that are now considered total rubbish. So the world changes, beliefs change, what is right and what is wrong changes, and as a writer, such changes make up wonderful fodder for subjects for a writer suffering from writer's block. The talk generated lots of questions and comments, and left people with lots of ideas. Perhaps the questions raised will spark more books, but at any rate it will prompt people to dwell into a book that is hard to describe, easy to read but challenging in it scope.

"It is not thy duty to complete the work, but neither art thou free to desist from it"

Rabbi Tarfon, Pirke Aboth, Sayings of the Fathers II, 21

This phrase appears in the funeral service, but it is also a useful guide for the living. When I sold my bookshop 18 years ago and retired, Judy, my wife, gave me a Parker pen and said 'go to it, write!'. Writing was always there in background, something I wanted to do, and have dabbled in. I had a short poem published in the NZ Listener way back in 1957, and a short story some years later, but with the pressure of work and the family, writing got left behind. Having retired I had the time, and did get a piece published on the composer and architect, Richard Fuchs, a short booklet about the Jewish philanthropists, Annie and Max Deckston, I wrote numerous book reviews and a chapter on New Zealand Jewish writers in the book, Jewish Lives in New Zealand, Ed. Leonard Bell and Diana Morrow, (Auckland, 2012), I also kept writing stories that languished on my computer, and indeed, some got lost from my computer and survived only as printed copies. Bearing the injunction of Rabbi Tarfon in mind I am revisiting these stories, and gathering them to make up a collection. They are stories of 2000 - 3000 words. This seems to be my appropriate span. I don't write long stories, novels, with complicated plots and many characters. They are all about encounters between people, native New Zealanders and immigrants, fathers and sons, growing old, values of an earlier generation and those of a younger generation. Music features in some of the stories, but by no means in all. Hardly any is autobiographical, but they all draw on my experiences, people I knew, situations I faced. I may never complete the work, but I do not want to desist from it. I don't know what I will do with these stories, but first of all I have to bring them together, revise them, and then I will see what will happen. I seem to have my own voice and the stories are uniquely mine. If I get a bit slack with my blogs, it is because I am working on completing the work I set for myself.

Heritage

The two concerts I attended within the last couple of weeks raised questions about my cultural heritage. Marta Sebestyen sang old Hungarian songs going back to the sixteenth century. I knew none of them, but there was a sense of the familiar in the idiom. Last night Amelia Hall played Bartok's Second Violin Concerto with Orchestra Wellington. Listening to both of these concerts made me regret the heritage that was stolen from me. My father and my grandmother wallowed in Hungarian folk music, as well as kitschy operettas and popular hits of their time. Hungarian music was an integral part of their personality. They knew hundreds of songs. My father played them all on the piano that was given to him for his Bar Mitzvah. His piano playing, his music defined him, the charming, lovable man sitting at the piano while the rest of the company danced and sang. 

Sixty people saw us off when we left Budapest on 18 October 1948, a hall full of people who attended Bartok's last concert in Budapest sang 'El indultam szep hazambol', 'I left my beautiful country behind' and this homesickness never left Bartok. It cropped up in his Concerto for Orchestra and it was foreshadowed in his Second Violin Concerto which he wrote just before he left for the United States. Unlike Bartok, I didn't leave happy, beautiful memories behind. The mid 1940s was not a happy time in Hungary. But this sense that the antisemites, the Nazis, stole my heritage lingered below the surface. When these antisemites  came to power they declared that Jews, who were so much part of Hungarian society and contributed so much to the image of Hungary, to Hungarian culture, music, literature were not real Hungarians. Serbs, Moldavian, Slovaks, Germans Romanians were all OK, real Hungarians, but Jews were an alien element. I lost this Hungarian heritage, but did not acquire a British, New Zealand heritage. Perhaps the great thing about New Zealand is that I was honored for for what I did, my contribution to the Jewish community and music. Others were recognized for their contribution to a variety ethnic or minority groups. This is something about New Zealanders that my father recognized and this is why he chose to migrate here.

Order of Merit

To say that I was flabbergasted, bowled over, when I received a letter from Government House that said that I had been nominated for membership of the New Zealand Order of Merit is an understatement. Such gongs, medals, distinctions usually go to well known personages with substantial public profiles, and perhaps, as I imagined, egos to match. Who am I, a humble retired bookseller and care giver to get such distinction. But I am very flattered. I particularly appreciate the comments from numerous people, who said how much I influenced, helped or mentored them. Often people do things, say things, that has a great impact on others without realizing this. It may be just the way I do things, the way I think of things, that sheds a new or different light on the perceptions of others. Perhaps my strength is thinking outside the box, where others see problems I see challenges, opportunities and solutions. This is how I got involvement with the establishment of the Hutt Valley Chamber music Society when the national organisation closed down the Hutt Valley series of concerts, this is how I got involved with the establishments of the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand, the success of which exceeded our wildest hopes and imagination. Unworthy as I deemed myself, I obviously cast a longer shadow than I was aware of and I greatly value the honour confirmed on me.