LAZAR: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY FATHER

by Leonard and my Yanow ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 8, 1980

Behind the trick title is this: Leonard Yanow, a retired Miami man, has written his life story from the time of his birth in 1903 in Volkovysk in the Russian Pale to his departure with his family for America almost 20 years later--and his son, a writer who goes under the name my, has made imaginative emendations to the story by means of ""time travel"" and ""age regression."" Leonard, originally Lazar, tells a tale of a small-town youth: Jewish family life, working on a farm, occupation by the Germans (and a terrible event: being raped anally by a drunken German soldier), successive occupations by the Bolsheviks and then the Poles again, various attempts at seasonal business ventures. What the time-traveling my adds is along the line of the following: ""Rats! Oh god, there were rats scurrying around the room! Shuddering, Lazar listened to the sound of their feet scratching on the wooden floor near him and panicked. He leaped to his feet, ran blindly out of the shack, and raced to the main house as fast as he could."" Maybe we miss the point, but it seems like an awful lot of effort, all that age-regressing and time-traveling back over 70 years, just for a hunk of my's dime-store prose. Which finally doesn't add all that much vividness to a rather unremarkable memoir. A boring, toneless story.

Pub Date: May 8, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION