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Old Men at Midnight

 by Chiam Potok

review by Ed I. Palmer
     That the book opens with a quotation from Milton's L'Allegro should have been a warning enough that one will end "(m)ongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy." Somehow I missed the warning, preferring Keats' assurances from To Homer that "on the shores of darkness there is light." Well, men are given to error.

     Chiam Potok's terse yet descriptive prose drags you where you have never been and leaves you wondering if there is escape from where you are abandoned. Or, so it seems, having just finished Old Men at Midnight, a collection of three stories which are both unconnected and intertwined. Such is the dichotomy of Potok's work. If you thought you knew about the Holocaust, you will soon realize that your knowledge was faulted, for it not only was the product of generations before, but also has effected those which follow. Ours as well as theirs.

     In the book, we peer tangentially into the life of Ilena Davita Dinn, Ilena Davita, and I. D. Chandel, different personifications of the same mysterious woman, whose gift is to compel men to bear their souls of experiences which have molded their lives but have become unrecountable. Whether as Syble or Lilith or Circe, she ultimately exploits all and leaves the last broaching madness as the truth about his past is finally reopened, revealed, about to be exploited.

     The book is about change. The kind of change not fully recognized, suppressed within the deepest part of the soul. Change which can only be finally accomplished by blinding exposure of the truth to the light. This is not change as Cary Grant describes when recounting his transformation from circus juggler to movie star, saying "I played the part of the man I wanted to be until I became that man." These are dark, private, denied charges. Read it at your own peril.

     Of the men, their only connection is their "Jewishness". Yet the themes of their transformations are universal. The survivor clears his soul hoping to embrace a now promising future. The defector, seeking peace, clears his soul of denying his heritage in return for acceptance. The aging intellectual clears his soul of a debt long unacknowledged, finding that payment is at a terrible cost.

     Yet we never learn the truth about the change in the woman who is the vehicle for this collection. At the end she has transformed from teenage Jewish American Princess to retirement-aged shape-shifting caller of the dead. We know not why or how. Her change, I pray, is not universal. (Potok may have lured her from the Kabalah.) Whether to hate her or fear her is one of the lingering questions as the book closes. Don't miss it.