The Human Touch

You Should soon be hearing nice things about Irving Fineman’s novel, “Hear, Ye Sons”, which is scheduled for publication early in September. In the meantime I might help by introducing the author to you.

Only a few short years ago he was almost nobody. He was making his living as a practically anonymous civil and naval engineer, writing on the side, of course, the way doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers, clergymen, engineers, artisans, shoemakers, explorers, artists and astronomers do. Then he read, or heard, about the Longmans, Green prize contest for a first novel. He sent them his and won the prize, seven thousand, five hundred dollars, a very pretty penny for a budding author even in boom days. The book was published as “This Pure Young Man” and then followed “Lovers Must Learn.” And in almost no time, so to speak, he was somebody. I did not myself realize the manner in which the publication of two books could convert someone from comparative obscurity into prominence, until I heard a stenographer, who had read one of his books, gush at, or over, his photograph and almost moan the desire ### meet him. Such is fame!

It is now possible for me to inform this stenographer, and as many others as may read this column, that Mr. Fineman is not a particularly striking-looking individual, his photograph to the contrary notwith-standing. Stenographers who may wish to prove me wrong are welcome to sit at Mr. Fineman’s feet, more or less literally, at Bennington College, Vermont, where Mr. Fineman, even now, is teaching English—to Americans.

He’s not very tall, he’s not very wide. He is intelligent, mild and gentle-mannered. He speaks in a tone of voice so low that one has difficulty sometimes in following him. An upper tooth in the centre out of line with its mates gives him a somewhat sinister appearance. He communicates the impression of a man who gives quiet thought to problems, who rarely speaks without thinking, one who is not accustomed to astound with the brilliance of his paradox, but who may please quietly with the power of innocent penetration; one, who, if he did a brave thing, for example, would do it quietly, self-effacingly. He is the typical scholar, at first transplanted out of his metier, and now returned to it. In another time and in another world, such a one as he might have given us a spoken commentary on the Talmud; today he happens to be making a written study of modernism in prose writing.

In “Hear, Ye Sons” also he is the teacher, but the teaching lies deep, ##mplicit, in the story; the story-teller ###ver—so far as I have read—steps ###ide of his delightful character. ### is an artist, fulfilling his mission ###hin the frame of his art, so ### speak. Through the character ###rough whom he is presumably tell### his story, one who has lived narrowly within himself as a Jew, but whose children had lost the sense of significance as Jews, Mr. Fineman gives back that sense of significance. “It is important,” said Mr. Fineman, “that Jews should know where they are in the world.” He doesn’t know that he has ever been unconscious of his Jewishness, nor, I believe, has he ever been militantly, chip-on-the-shoulder Jew-conscious. His father, he tells me, took good care to teach him all about it, by telling him Talmudic tales and legends, and he, in writing this book, has assumed the character of his father toward his brain-created children.

Mr. Fineman has given his Jews significance by relating them to a past of which hardly seventy-five out of a hundred Jews in New York have any consciousness or cognizance. “A skeptic Jew, I’ve long been a believer in the importance of knowing one’s origin in order to know one’s place in the world, in the stream of life.” And when a Jew shows that he senses the significance of his past his attitude evokes a respect from non-Jews which the rootless Jew cannot evoke.

Mr. Fineman sees young Jews running away from their past although they don’t know whether that past is good or bad. If they knew their past, and then rejected it, he points out, that would be a deliberate choice, which he might regret, but could not resent as an unnecessary tragedy. But all the young Jews whom he sees in flight from their past do not know enough about it to know what it is. The typical young Jew in flight from his own past needs some kind of past and tries to adopt one, but others beside Mr. Fineman may doubt that it is, for them, a usable past, one which can stick to them, or they to it.

Irving Fineman is a Jew and an American. He was born in this country. As an engineer and as a writer he feels that he has contributed to it. He says of himself that he is a Jew by his past, American by his life. “My father made that past something which I could respect.” Out of his knowledge of the Bible and from Jewish literature—to which his father introduced him—he has extracted a body of knowledge, a philosophy so civilized, he cannot understand how any Jew should think it necessary to apologize for it. He credits Ludwig Lewisohn with having helped greatly in making young Jews conscious of their inheritance and proud of it. Mr. Fineman’s own little mite of contribution to that consciousness is far less strident, far less raw.

ARTFUL DODGERS IN FAMINE

This is a little anecdote about how three artists and a house painter got what they wanted during the famine years in Russia, when certain necessities were as rare in Russia as the most expensive orchids may be on the East Side during a blizzard. Among these almost priceless commodities at the time were kerosene and sugar. Now these three artists and the house painter had received a commission to paint and decorate the local Cheka building, and if anyone could get things it would be the Cheka. The four demanded kerosene to mix their paint with, and obtained it. After a time, however, the local official called to see how the work was getting along and raised a terrific hue: The house must be finished in two days! he shouted. The painter humbly raised a deprecating hand and said, “Surely, tovarish, but we need sugar so the paint will dry fast enough.” Believe it or not, within several hours each had delivered to him three pounds of sugar, or the incredible total of twelve pounds.