[.ca] Rodinsky's Room (ISBN 1862073295)

The right story, the wrong storytellers:
Having lived in London, where I came to know the Spitalfields neighborhood where the book is set and heard much about the "urban legend" of David Rodinsky, I expected to enjoy this book. Reading Liechtenstein and Sinclair's evocative impressions of Spitalfields took me back, but otherwise "Rodinsky's Room" was a disappointment. The perceptive reader senses the truth behind the mystery of David Rodinsky early on: Rodinsky was neither a genius nor a scholar, but a man of limited intelligence who lived most of his life with his protective, reclusive mother. After losing his mother, the sheltered Rodinsky couldn't make a life for himself in an unfamiliar world and was ultimately institutionalized. The authors find witnesses and documents who tell the truth about Rodinsky, but against all the evidence they dutifully record in the book the authors persist much too long in the belief that Rodinsky was some kind of inspired cabbalist mystic. The Rodinsky story is an interesting one, but Liechtenstein and Sinclair are not the right authors to tell it. Sinclair veers between disjointed autobiographical ramblings (none of which bear any apparent relevance to Rodinsky) and repetitive efforts to psychoanalyze Liechtenstein, asking over and over, "Why is this woman so interested in David Rodinsky?" While she writes more coherently than Sinclair, Liechtenstein comes across as flighty, self-absorbed and ludicrously naive; the story of Liechtenstein's rediscovery of her Judaism, the real heart of the book, gets old very quickly. Also, one does not need to be a former Londoner to notice Liechtenstein's factual errors (many of which don't even involve London; for example, she places Massachusetts' Brandeis University in California), the large number of which led me to question the publisher's editorial competence. Despite its many shortcomings, I can recommend "Rodinsky's Room" as a well-written memoir notwithstanding its content. However, readers looking to learn something about David Rodinsky's milieu - the disappearing Jewish East End - should look elsewhere.

The creation of an urban legend:
This is a book interesting for reasons unintended by - and perhaps unwelcome - to the authors. Rodinsky was a very ordinary man, whose room above an unused synagogue was left unopened for nearly two decades after his death. Since nobody could remember offhand what happened to him, the wildest stories were put about - perhaps he had been a cabalist, who had learned how to walk through walls! Detective abilities in Sherlock Holmes's hometown would appear to have degenerated considerably, as Rodinsky turns out to have been moved first to a hospital, then to a psychiatric institution, and finally buried, all recorded properly by the British welfare state. The truth was tracked down by the two authors, Lichtenstein, a performance artist from a wealthy and assimilated family, indulging herself in guilt, and Sinclair, a local and more cynical (and non-Jewish) journalist, in a post-industrial London neighborhood that sounds like a cross between Dickens and Hanif Kureshi -indeed, by the end of the book Lichtenstein seems intent on recreating "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid", with herself as the downwardly mobile Rosie married to a husband who is the son of a Pakistani and an Irish Catholic - and they name their firstborn son after Rodinsky! The reader is likely to be alternately bored, annoyed, and bewildered by these goings-on. But the real virtue of the book is that it is a textbook example of the creation of what folklorists (i.e. Brunvand) now call an "urban legend". Here we have step by step the process by which an ordinary, normal event is transformed by media hysteria and public gullibility into a supernatural happening. That should ensure its place on reading lists in folklore and journalism courses - and serve as a warning to the rest of us.

Enchanting mystery, but inadequate and a bit parochial:
Lichenstein and Sinclair have taken a fascinating and perplexing mystery and have raised it to the status of urban legend. On many levels, their collaborative attempt succeeds admirably: Lichtenstein skillfully (with some elements of a suspenseful detective story) presents her search for David Rodinsky, whose room was rediscovered, virtually untouched, two decades after it had been abandoned, and Sinclair places the story in its many cultural contexts. Yet, in other ways, their narrative falls short: more questions are raised than answered by their book, and Sinclair's contributions occasionally suffer from a parochialism that makes his discussion difficult for the general reader. As Sinclair himself admits, "The more the mystery of Rodinsky was discussed and debated, the dimmer the outline of the human presence." The book alternates between chapters by the two authors, and Lichtenstein's contributions are far more straightforward. She weaves her investigation into Rodinsky's identity with her own quest for her Jewish identity and ancestry, and I found her chapters to be far more compelling. Unfortunately, Lichtenstein seems a bit out of her depth when discussing Rodinsky's writings. She confesses she doesn't have the background necessary to understand or translate most of the scraps of papers and journals found in Rodinsky's rooms, yet both she (and Sinclair) repeatedly refer to Rodinsky as a talented linguist and scholar (or a cabbalist). This claim would have been greatly supported by reprinting or summarizing some of the texts left in the room, but we are given only four examples of Rodinsky's apparently prodigious output: two grammatically inept notes to his aunt (including one notable for its venom), the translation of a page of Chinese characters that turns out merely to say "I am David Rodinsky" over and over, and a journal entry on the study of the Assyrian language that could have been written (stylistic errors and all) by a college freshman. Was Rodinsky truly a scholar and a linguist, or was he just a reclusive dabbler? The evidence presented in the book is hardly convincing either way. Sinclair's nonlinear meditations are also absorbing; he finds parallels to the mystery of Rodinksy in a broad range of literary themes and cultural myths, and he aptly illustrates the East End neighborhood where Rodinsky spent nearly all his life. Although he is a wonderful stylist, Sinclair seems to be writing for his fellow members of the East End literati (and for the critics) rather than for the general reader. Time and again, he mentions London-based semi-celebrities without any introduction whatsoever; I can't imagine many American--or even British--readers knowing most of the people and friends Sinclair mentions. If, before you begin this book, you can't identify Steven Berkoff, David Gascoyne, James Fox, George Melly, John Harle, and dozens of other similarly obscure artists and writers, you will know even less about them after you finish reading Sinclair's chapters. Even better-known writers like Kathy Acker and Arthur Morrison deserve some sort of identification. Furthermore, Sinclair's chapter placing Rodinsky's story within the context of the mythology of the golem seems far-fetched; the parallels just aren't there. Indeed, most of those who knew Rodinsky clearly find this comparison odious ("There must be no talk of golems, cabbalists, interdimensional voyages, invisibility," says one. "Rodinsky was a man to be pitied, an inadequate \owho\c unfortunately attained nothing . . . due to his low IQ.") But such objections hardly keep Sinclair from attempting to substantiate this analogy for nearly 30 pages. Nevertheless, in spite of my rather significant reservations, I found this book overall to be an affecting celebration of the life of a man who otherwise would be one of the many reclusive loners and social outcasts who disappear in the world on a daily basis.

Deceptively simple:
Gradually this story of one apparently fairly ordinary old Talmudic scholar and how he became emblematic of the diaspora and then of the holocaust. Deceptively simple in the way the story is slowly revealed, I found this one of the most moving books I have read in several years. Without any dramatic special effects, the authors make the mysterious occupant of Princelet Street at once far less of a mystery and far more of a human being. This is a wonderful picture of Jewish immigration to London's East End, but it also helps us understand the kind of loss and sense of yearning which the immigrants from Eastern Europe brought with them into their new place of exile. Anyone interested in Jewish life in London should read this.

A disappointment at best:
This is a very thin excuse for a book. The premise is promising, but the authors don't provide a reason for its existence. Rachel Lichtenstein's quest for the story behind Rodinsky's room has its interesting moments, but Ian Sinclair's interludes read like an over-long Vanity Fair feature. The mystery of Rodinsky's life is never fully fleshed out, and I was left wondering "why write the book"? A personal quest should stay personal unless there is something revelatory that will enlighten others.