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     When I woke up this morning, I found myself thinking
about "The View from Saturday"; and I suppose when one wakes
up thinking about what one has read, the reading of it was
worthwhile.

     Epiphany, New York, the town where is action takes
place is not to be found on the Yahoo map on the Internet.
If, as I assume, "Epiphany" is an invented place name, then
its meaning may be of significance. It means "appearance",
and is commonly applied to January 6, as the anniversary of
the day on the the three Wise Men from the East brought to
Jesus their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh and he
made his first appearance, his "epiphany", to the Gentiles.
I ask: What, if anything, was it that made its appearance in
Epiphany NY? What, if anything, does the View from Saturday
reveal?

     I can't quite figure out what exactly the title, "A
View from Saturday" is intended to mean.  Is it to imply
that the book somehow has a Jewish perspective on life
inasmuch as Saturday is the Jewish holiday?  The
circumstance that three of the major characters are Jewish
and that it features a Jewish wedding would tend to
corroborate this hypothesis.

     In this context, I was struck by how much importance
the book assigns to the fact that the four students are the
chosen students.  The discussion of the rationale by which
Mrs. Olinski chooses them is the theme which runs through
all 159 pages of the book.  These four chosen students
dominate the book no less than their school by their innate
decency, intelligence, perseverance and diligence.

     As I mentioned to you, the description of Julian
Singh's arrival in Epiphany in knee-length trousers, brought
back memories of my own experiences in Konnarock when in
1939 I arrived there with broken English and in short
trousers. I learned then what it is like to be excluded on
account of being different, and I learned that being
different can be a source of dignity and of self-esteem. It
seems not unimportant that Julian traveled with his parents
on ocean liners around the world, that he had no real home,
and no friends, and that in consequence of his loneliness,
he established a closer relationship with his family than
did any of the other three members of the quartet.

     Little Orphan Annie, the comic strip character, stars
in the school play not, I think, by coincidence. In a work
of art, nothing happens by coincidence. Only Julian seems
close to his family: the others while not strictly orphans,
are sufficiently remote from their parents to invite
comparison. Nadia's mother remains wholly off-stage.  Nadias
father does not know how to spend his allotted visitation
rights. He "hovers" over her in an objectionable manner, and
it requires a violent storm and a turtle emergency to
establish even a minimum of understanding between them.
Nadias father suggests to her that it might be her fate, not
unlike that of the turtles, to spend the forseeable future
commuting back and forth between her divorced parents, her
mother in upper New York State and her father in Florida.  I
find that a very touching image, perhaps because I have
spent so much of my life commuting between Boston and
Konnarock, for years as a student going home, then to take
care of my parents there, then to take care of their house,
and now, I think to take care of my sister.

     The relationship of the other two, Ethan Potter and
Noah Gershon, to their families is sketched only lightly,
but seems tenuous at best. Noah argues with his mother about
the B and B letter, Ethan refuses to have his mother drive
him to Sillington House, where he has tea with his three
friends. This is a book for children who are growing up, and
the idea is that as you grow up you leave your family
behind. I am not sure that is a really good idea.

     So they have founded their own little commune or club
or kibbutz, if you like, and Eva Marie Olinski is their
house mother. They call themselves "The Souls", and I
suppose being children they may be permitted to do so. But
it is in fact quite objectionable to wear ones heart on ones
sleeve, to parade ones soul in public, and even more so, to
make a party of it. Remember that playing souls, or playing
ghosts which is the same thing, is a favorite pasttime of
children.  Halloween is the festival of playing soul. - for
that is what ghosts and goblins are all about.

     What holds this group together is their
competitiveness, their determination to be the best. While I
very much value competitiveness as a spur to hard work and
achievement, I am not sure in the end how satisfying it is
to be better than everyone else, just for the sake of being
better. I think that if one sufficiently loves the music
that one plays, the scene that one draws, the feelings that
one expresses in a poem, then whether or not one succeeds in
the competition is not very important.

     I was little impressed with the value of the knowledge
that is touted as being so exceptional in this book. Some of
the answers given, as I mentioned, are just plain wrong, and
the others seem by and large unimportant, a word game if you
will, a shuffling of names to which Shakespeare's question
applies: "A name, a name, whats in a name, a rose by any
other name would smell as sweet." Real knowledge is
understanding, is the ability to think and to see with the
mind's eye.  But if this book does not provide a
prescription for such knowledge, reading it and thinking
about it provides one with the opportunity of discovering it
on ones own.

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