Captives

It is fitting that this book should come out in the season of Sukkot, when Jews have finished baring our souls during the High Holy Days and then repair to our flimsy booths in the fields, celebrating the harvest while acknowledging our ultimate vulnerability when faced with the Eternal. Daniel Bloom, a screenwriter whose obsession with storytelling threatens his marriage and family, lives in the anomic LA of Didion, trying to find some "meaning in his life," one of the euphemisms for coming face-to-face with his fear and pain. His journey is aided by the similarly wounded Rabbi Ethan Brenner, whose candor doesn't fly in La-La-land, and gets him fired from his Reform Temple. Hasak-Lowy's long, loping paragraphs describe Bloom's frustration with the state of the world, as well as with his personal life, following him through an abbreviated tour of Tel Aviv with one of Rabbi Ethan's friends as his guide. Even during a memorial service, Bloom can only use the terms of film to think about his outward deportment: "...disturbed by the thought, What's my motivation here? Obviously it isn't about him [the deceased]," until he finally is able to touch his own anguish and shame. The metaphor of a dying dog is a bit overdone at the book's conclusion, as is the final treatment of Bloom's work, but the book overall sings the plaintive song of imperfect humans trying to fix an imperfect world while also trying to fix the disrepair of their own lives, while wondering if some aspect of the Infinite could be watching.

It is fitting that this book should come out in the season of Sukkot, when Jews have finished baring our souls during the High Holy Days and then repair to our flimsy booths in the fields, celebrating the harvest while acknowledging our ultimate vulnerability when faced with the Eternal. Daniel Bloom, a screenwriter whose obsession with storytelling threatens his marriage and family, lives in the anomic LA of Didion, trying to find some "meaning in his life," one of the euphemisms for coming face-to-face with his fear and pain. His journey is aided by the similarly wounded Rabbi Ethan Brenner, whose candor doesn't fly in La-La-land, and gets him fired from his Reform Temple. Hasak-Lowy's long, loping paragraphs describe Bloom's frustration with the state of the world, as well as with his personal life, following him through an abbreviated tour of Tel Aviv with one of Rabbi Ethan's friends as his guide. Even during a memorial service, Bloom can only use the terms of film to think about his outward deportment: "...disturbed by the thought, What's my motivation here? Obviously it isn't about him [the deceased]," until he finally is able to touch his own anguish and shame. The metaphor of a dying dog is a bit overdone at the book's conclusion, as is the final treatment of Bloom's work, but the book overall sings the plaintive song of imperfect humans trying to fix an imperfect world while also trying to fix the disrepair of their own lives, while wondering if some aspect of the Infinite could be watching.