THE WORCESTER ACCOUNT

A rendezvous with the past"" is contained in eleven autobiographical excerpts (most of which have appeared in the New Yorker) which have for their climate the orthodoxy of Jewish family life on Providence Street, in Worcester, Massachusetts. Dominated by his father, a Talmud scholar, his mother, whose lack of english was an estrangement, his brother's friend, the enthusiastically energetic Willie Lavin, these extensions of memory mirror the bewildering perplexities of a boy's insular circle and the conflicts with the world around it, discussed and forbidden, and add a glow to the portraits of families and friends. The unflagging matrimonial activities of Aunt Ida; the many loving gestures of Willie and his and suicide; the ceremonies and solemnities of their faith; the strange course of his music lessons; the downfall of a rich man; the interludes of Emma Goldman and of Eleanora Sears; the visits of the Angel of Death -- these make up a tender and expiatory valediction with many shadings of emotion. Effective and affecting.