For
a long time, I reconciled meager book sales with typical writer’s
rationalizations: “Well, it made me feel good, I got something out of my
system, and my colleagues laughed.”[i] Then, a friend pointed out that I could
achieve the same effect with a lot less effort by breaking wind during a staff
meeting. So, I admit it. I would like to reach beyond my little circle
and touch a larger audience with my writing.
As
to how to do that, the answer may lie in the descriptive narration of Morley
Torgov’s A Good Place to Come From, the
1975 Leacock Medal winner.
Torgov’s
book recounts his adolescent life in the tiny Jewish community in Sault Ste.
Marie, Ontario in the 1930s and early 1940s.
He and I would be vying for the same spot on the worstsellers list if he
had written his book with only his friends and neighbours in mind.
But
Torgov invites the rest of the world into his experience by focusing on common
concerns like the centerpiece father-son relationship and by describing the
Jewish cultural context in just enough, but not too much detail for the
purpose.
“Not ghetto Jews,” Torgov says, adding however
that the Soo Jews were always “scratching, scraping, building up, tearing down,
conniving and surviving.” His father, an immigrant who fled the Russian army in
1917, set up his clothing store in Northern Ontario hoping to supply steel
workers.
In narrative description, it’s not enough to
be skilled in finding words. Writers need to sense when to stop using them as
well. It’s a talent that likely requires hard work to sustain though Morley
Torgov seemed to have a natural sense of what we needed to know and how to omit
needless words.
Yet,
sometimes, the situation does warrant a lot of words. On his battle with his father over a career,
Torgov carefully describes the veneration of two New York Yiddish-language
newspapers, Forward and The Day. Torgov’s father reads and rereads articles on
“filial disloyalty,” parental suffering, and finally pride when a son
graduates in “medicine !” [ii]
Texture
and detail play a big role in the story on “The Making of a President 1944,” a
failed attempt to recruit a President of the Jewish community group. Not much of an event in itself. But funny because Torgov devotes many pages
to the challenge of filling the thankless role. “A leader could rarely delegate
authority simply because his peers were seldom—if ever—in a mood to take orders...
The budget made generous allowances for nothing.”
Torgov’s
father had two wives, endured two flawed relationships, and became a widower
twice. The book only mentions the death
of Torgov’s mother briefly but it gives a lot of space to his stepmother
possibly because this relationship best illustrates his father’s plight or
maybe because Torgov felt less pain in exploring it. Sometimes omitted words speak more loudly
than description. [iii]
In
the story of the first purpose-built Sault Ste. Marie Synagogue, Torgov gives a
blow-by-blow account of the building design, funding, and construction as a
build up to literal blows and a great embarrassment for his father. The story
merits the descriptive detail because it comes to define the relationship between
father and son.
A Good Place is really one great effort to
understand and share that relationship.
Yet with the death of Torgov senior, the author admits that he cannot
understand everything about his father, but that he can celebrate his memory
and this may be enough. In doing this,
he helps us understand - a bit more about the Jewish life in Canada, the
Depression, World War II, and how and when to use words, omit words, and share
personal experience in a way others can enjoy and in a way that might help them
buy your books.
[ii]
Although Torgov had entered journalism as a Sault Daily Star cub reporter at
sixteen and would be a writer for the rest of his life, he had also established
himself firmly as a Toronto corporate lawyer by the time this, his first book,
was written. As I typed this, he is still
writing and lawyering at eighty-five years of age (2013).
[iii]
Torgov’s writing suggests that a general rule is that description should be
proportionate to importance, but also, that like all rules, its fracture can be
more interesting than its integrity.