Every so often you run across something - an article, a video, a book - that completely blows your mind. It may not happen often, but when it does, you know it.
This happened to me yesterday. I was sitting at my desk at work, eating lunch, checking out my favorite web sites, when I stumbled across this piece, which only lived on NY Magazine's home page for half a day. I'm glad I found it when I did.
Mark Jacobson's excerpt from his upcoming book, The Lampshade, kicked my ass and kept me in my seat, barely tasting my food, for its duration. The topic is dark, macabre: Jacobson came into possession of a lampshade purportedly made from the skin of dead Jews in Germany during the Holocaust. He writes of his journey in attempting to learn the true lineage of this bizarre antique. But the story, even here in this comparatively small excerpt, is about so much more than that horrific lampshade.
It seems that, while searching for the heritage of the lampshade, Jacobsen wound up searching for his own as well.
While reading it, during my lunch, I was alternately nauseated (how can you read about a lampshade made of skin without getting queasy?) and enthralled, learning little snippets of a history about which I thought I already knew so much. Did you know there was a "Bitch of Buchenwald?" I didn't...and I know a lot about the Nazi camps for someone born almost half a century after they were finally closed.
I also got to learn a little about post-Katrina New Orleans, which is where the mysterious lampshade surfaced, only to wind up back on my own turf - that of an assimilated Jew trying to navigate the importance of one's own cultural heritage while processing the horrors that created much of it. Jacobson is twice my age, sure, but the questions he asked and the observations he made could easily have come from my own mouth...or keyboard...if only I was a good enough writer.
And, from what I read, he really is a brilliant writer. I want this book; I will read this book. I can't wait to own this book (Charles, please put this book in our Amazon shopping cart immediately!). I need the full story.
This happened to me yesterday. I was sitting at my desk at work, eating lunch, checking out my favorite web sites, when I stumbled across this piece, which only lived on NY Magazine's home page for half a day. I'm glad I found it when I did.
Mark Jacobson's excerpt from his upcoming book, The Lampshade, kicked my ass and kept me in my seat, barely tasting my food, for its duration. The topic is dark, macabre: Jacobson came into possession of a lampshade purportedly made from the skin of dead Jews in Germany during the Holocaust. He writes of his journey in attempting to learn the true lineage of this bizarre antique. But the story, even here in this comparatively small excerpt, is about so much more than that horrific lampshade.
It seems that, while searching for the heritage of the lampshade, Jacobsen wound up searching for his own as well.
While reading it, during my lunch, I was alternately nauseated (how can you read about a lampshade made of skin without getting queasy?) and enthralled, learning little snippets of a history about which I thought I already knew so much. Did you know there was a "Bitch of Buchenwald?" I didn't...and I know a lot about the Nazi camps for someone born almost half a century after they were finally closed.
I also got to learn a little about post-Katrina New Orleans, which is where the mysterious lampshade surfaced, only to wind up back on my own turf - that of an assimilated Jew trying to navigate the importance of one's own cultural heritage while processing the horrors that created much of it. Jacobson is twice my age, sure, but the questions he asked and the observations he made could easily have come from my own mouth...or keyboard...if only I was a good enough writer.
And, from what I read, he really is a brilliant writer. I want this book; I will read this book. I can't wait to own this book (Charles, please put this book in our Amazon shopping cart immediately!). I need the full story.
No comments:
Post a Comment