Daniel Melnick's Blog

A New Novel - A Burnt Offering

2020-06-14T11:02:00.001-04:00

I've published through Amazon (including Kindle) a much revised and enlarged version of my 2011 retelling in contemporary Israel of the Sacrifice of Isaac, updated now to the possibility of a nuclear exchange with Iran, and adding newly developed characters. Its title is "A Burnt Offering - a fable and linked story." The latter refers to a character appearing in the fable, Dr. Morris Weisberg, who is fully introduced by the story and is the subject of an unpublished novel of mine, "Pathological States." Here's an image of the cover, and to the right there should be a live link to the Amazon site for "A Burnt Offering." The photo on the cover conveys an impression of two main characters, Ari and Elena Schneider.

The Ash Tree chapter 1

2020-01-01T11:23:00.002-05:00

The first chapter of my novel "The Ash Tree" about Armenian-Americans in the aftermath of the 1915 Armenian Genocide in Turkey. It was recorded last summer and posted on YouTube with images on December 31, 2019. In 2015, the centenary of the 1915 Genocide, it was published by a small non-profit press in the Central Valley of California, West of West Books, and in 2016, it was the sole book with Armenian content chosen for the short-list of Stanford's William Saroyan Prize.

Updated sequel to "Hungry Generations" - a new novel "The Fall of the Berlin Wall"

2019-09-01T12:28:00.001-04:00

The Fall of the Berlin Wall is a sequel to my earlier novel, “Hungry Generations,” about characters in their late twenties in Los Angeles circa 1972; it featured a legendary German-Jewish/Russian émigré piano-virtuoso, the ‘sacred monster’ Alexander Petrov, his wife and two adult children, as well as the composer and their friend Jack Weinstein, as a young man.

Now those characters are in their forties in Cleveland in November 1989, and the novel is about personal crises echoing the fall of the Berlin Wall and that upturning of the old order. Jack has become a successful composer and educator, and he is married to Sarah, the intense and irrepressible daughter of the late virtuoso.

The culture of classical music is represented here by Cleveland Orchestra musicians and memories of émigrés in flight from Nazi Europe, some of whom raised their American children in Los Angeles. The lives of the young are partly shaped by popular culture – its music, its preferred drugs, and the influence of punk. The culture of the family is also at risk from memories and betrayals, and members of the Weinstein family share the telling of this story. A surprising bonus is the magnificent music played and imagined here.

It is Thanksgiving week, and Jack does not understand why the couple’s marriage is collapsing. Visiting them for Thanksgiving is Sarah’s brother, Joseph Petrov, who is Jack’s closest friend; the hugely talented pianist son of Alexander is now caught in the middle between his sister and his brother-in-law. The week’s events are told by this trio of characters, and much of the novel revolves around Sarah – her Dostoyevskian intensity, her suffering, her stinging repartee, and the friendships she forms and betrays.

Friendship itself is a force – emotional, erotic, and imaginative – in the lives of these characters, with its potential success or failure for her and Jack, for the brothers-in-law, and for the group of friends surrounding the three characters. Again, the surprising bonus of the magnificent music played and imagined here includes Jack’s plans for a work responding to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The idea that long-standing barriers can collapse shapes the novel, its vision of politics, of music, and the past.

This heartbreaking, tragicomic work brings to life each of the human beings here. The characters in this emotionally compelling, partly political literary work are reminiscent of Myshkin, Nastasya, and Rogozhin in Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” or, also, of those in a greatly shortened DeLillo’s “Underworld.” Integrated at the end of the short novel is a section titled “The Past” containing six “origin” stories that evoke explosively what has been at stake in the startling past of the characters.

Here’s the synopsis:

The Fall of the Berlin Wall – a novel

Daniel Melnick (216-378-9302; danielcmelnick@gmail.com)

“Maybe I’m proud myself, even if I’m shameless. You just called me perfection. A fine perfection! – if just for the sake of being willful I’ve trampled on a fortune and a brilliant man.” --Nastasiya in Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot

Two events in November 1989 mark the lives of the novel’s characters. One is the death of a woman discovered naked in the snow outside the Weinstein house, during a massive storm buffeting Cleveland on Thanksgiving. The other event is the fall of the Berlin Wall, taking place two weeks earlier – an upturning of the old order that corresponds to these characters’ desire to change their lives.

Jack Weinstein wants to save his marriage to Sarah, the intense, unpredictable daughter of the late legendary German-Jewish classical pianist and ‘sacred monster’ Alexander Petrov. Unaware of what is causing the collapse of the marriage, he tries to confront her dissatisfaction and shifting allegiances, and much of the action revolves around her Dostoyevskian intensity, her repartee, and the friendships she forms and betrays. Sarah and Jack are in their forties and have a sixteen-year-old daughter, Sue, absorbed by her own efforts to deal with boys and drugs.

Joseph, Sarah’s brother, is visiting this Thanksgiving week. He is gay, and his friendship with his straight brother-in-law unfolds dramatically here. Joseph finds himself in the middle of the couple’s conflicts. The week’s events are told by the trio of family members. Both Joseph and Jack are musicians. Joseph Petrov is, like his late father, a piano virtuoso, and Jack is a classical composer and music professor; one of his compositions has just been nominated for a Grammy in contemporary classical music.

The Weinsteins’ friends have their own turbulence. And friendship – both healing and broken – becomes an issue in all their lives. Each of these characters has a piece of the solution to the troubles in the family’s lives, to their joy and grief, to their betrayals, and to a death – possibly a murder – that takes place in their midst. The Blacks, who live around the corner, are about to declare bankruptcy, for Jacob has been denied tenure and become a ‘freeway professor,’ teaching one class here, another there across town. There are their mutual friends, the Sinclairs, and especially Robert Sinclair becomes the target of Jacob’s bitterness about his life.

One of the Weinsteins’ best friends is an artist and a bohemian of sorts, Tom Mubar, who is divorced and shares custody of his seventeen-year-old son, Paul. Sarah has an affair, and when it collapses, she is drawn to Tom, who understands – she believes – what a disaster her life has become, but she painfully discovers that he does not reciprocate her feelings and is himself trying to endure his own shocks and dangers.

Everything comes to a head when the Weinsteins celebrate Thanksgiving with Joseph and their friends. At dinner, confrontations erupt from the tensions brewing all week, and Sarah, already depressed and disoriented, plummets into potentially suicidal despair.

“The Fall of the Berlin Wall” is a tragicomic portrait of the confusions and heartbreaking disasters in love and friendship, and it also pictures what may endure our collisions – whether it be love, art and music, or simply the welter of conflicting passions in youth and middle age. Six stories presenting the startling past of the characters are integrated into the end of the novel.

(The work is about 51,000 words.)

Table of Contents:

Thanksgiving Week

Prologue: Rachel and Jacob Black – Friday, November 24, 1989

Chapter 1: Joseph – Sunday afternoon, November 19, 1989

Chapter 2: Sarah – Sunday evening at the Weinstein party

Chapter 3: Jack – Monday morning, November 20, 1989

Chapter 4: Joseph – Monday evening at the Ramadanoff party

Chapter 5: Jack – Tuesday afternoon, November 21, 1989

Chapter 6: Sarah – Tuesday evening at Tom Mubar’s party

Chapter 7: Joseph – Wednesday afternoon, November 22, 1989

Chapter 8: Jack – Wednesday evening at Julius and Rose Weinstein’s party

Chapter 9: Joseph – Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 23, 1989

Chapter 10: Sarah – Thursday night at the Weinsteins

Chapter 11: Jack – Friday morning, November 24, 1989

Chapter 12: Sue – Saturday, Christmas Day 1989 in Berlin

The Past - Before the Fall

Chapter 13: Paul’s Story – The Fall of the Berlin Wall – November 9, 1989

Chapter 14 Tom’s Story – Triptych – 1950-1980

Chapter 15: Karen’s Story – Odalisque – September 1983

Chapter 16: Helen’s Story – Contrapuntal Piece – October 1982

Chapter 17: Jacob’s Story – Your Name Is Hiroshima – November 1984

Chapter 18: Julius’s Story – Einstein’s Sorrow – June 1980

New book from Mark Arax - "The Dreamt Land - Chasing Water and Dust Across California

2019-06-23T23:09:00.000-04:00

Knopf has published a brilliant book by Mark Arax, our nephew, titled "The Dreamt Land - Chasing Water and Dust Across California." As I wrote in a review, it's a passionate book with the epic sweep of a classic, at the level of other masterpieces about California like Joan Didion's workl I've followed Mark's work from the beginning, and - completely independent of his help with my book "The Ash Tree" about Armenian-Americans in the aftermath of the 1915 Genocide - I believe that he has grown tremendously from book to book:
"The Dreamt Land" is a wonderfully compelling book about water in the life of a state and above all about California itself - "the dreamt land." It has the passionate engagement and the great epic sweep of a classic. The personal stories, the vivid characters and encounters, and the interlinked portrayals of place and history unfold beautifully. And the book's voice combines a dark awareness of disaster, humiliations, and stark truths, with an affirming urgency that truly gives life to the work. The truth is the book is at the highest level, the sort of brilliant work that deserves a Pulitzer or National Book Award.
There's an Amazon link in the side column.

Literature and Music - Modernism

2019-03-26T11:40:00.000-04:00

Marcel Proust (1871-1922), In Search of Lost Time, from “Swann’s Way” (1913) excerpt.

Gustav Mahler:

Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde (1909) – Weng Wei – Der Abschied:

English Translation: …I stand here and wait for my friend; I wait to bid him a last farewell. I yearn, my friend, at your side to enjoy the beauty of this evening. Where are you? You leave me long alone! I walk up and down with my lute on paths swelling with soft grass. O beauty! O eternal loving-and-life-bedrunken world! He dismounted and handed him the drink of Farewells. He asked him where he would go and why must it be. He spoke, his voice was quiet. Ah my friend, Fortune was not kind to me in this world! Where do I go? I go, I wander in the mountains. I seek peace for my lonely heart. I wander homeward, to my abode! I'll never wander far. Still is my heart, awaiting its hour. The dear earth everywhere blossoms in spring and grows green anew! Everywhere and forever blue is the horizon! Forever ... Forever ...

Walter and Ferrier (51 and 56): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PogZpvxq6Cg

Ranier Maria Rilke (1875-1926): texts of poems "Music" and Sonnet to Orpheus I, 3

Arnold Schoenberg, texts for quartet (George's Transcendence) and for the ending of Moses and Aaron.

String Quartet No. 2, opus 10, 4^th move. (1908), Kolisch, Gilbert

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0GA20IaFVw

Moses and Aaron - 1938, Freiberg Orch. and Grundheber (2:10)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxrQDmmc4jg

Thomas Mann (1875-1955), Doctor Faustus (1947), near the end, chapter 47, on Lamentations of Dr. Faustus; then, earlier texts of Kretchman on op. 111, and Adrian’s thoughts after Kretschmar, culture, and barbarism.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

“Beim Schlafengehen” (1948) – Hermann Hesse:

GOING TO SLEEP Now that day has tired me, my spirits long for starry night kindly to enfold them, like a tired child. Hands, leave all your doing; brow, forget all your thoughts. Now all my senses want to sink themselves in slumber. And the soul unwatched, would soar in free flight, till in the magic circle of night it lives deeply and a thousand-fold. (2:25):

Kiri Te Kahana, Davis, LSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbU66ttUcqo

Brecht and Weill

The Three-penny Opera (1928) Text of Mack song and ending...

Excerpts from Pabst film – (2:02, 15:30, 18:58, 22:40-26:40):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-igC0jAV_zQ&t=136s

Concluding remarks:

W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) on Pater's aesthetic:

“It taught us to walk upon a rope, tightly stretched through serene air, and we were left to keep our feet upon a swaying rope in a storm.”

--from “Sailing to Byzantium”

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress.

To illustrate what Mann's Kretchmar was referring to:

Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in c minor, opus 111, second movement variations:

Claudio Arrau (9, 13:43, 15:29, 17:37, 18:14, 20:47)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ljq4MwzAbo&t=42s

Literature and Music talks - session 5 - Late Romanticism and Early Modern

2019-03-26T11:28:00.001-04:00

Flaubert and Baudelaire:

Flaubert (1821-1880), Madame Bovary (1857) – from Part Two, Chapter 8: text...

What Emma hears in Pt. Two, Ch. 15: Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermore” Act 1 Finale “Ah! Verrano a te sull'aure”:

LUCIA On the breeze
will come to you my ardent sighs…
When you think of me
living on tears and grief,
then shed a bitter tear
on this ring, ah, on this ring, etc.
ah, on this ring, etc.
EDGARDO and LUCIA On the breeze will come to you, etc. EDGARDO Remember, Heaven has joined us!
EDGARDO and LUCIA Farewell! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xToxhv_Y9nc Sutherland, Pavarotti.

Verlaine, Mallarmé (by Manet), Debussy and Stravinsky:

Text for Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (0-3:00) – and recreation of Diagalev/Nijinsky ballet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzzF21CFJFE

Debussy – from his libretto based on Maeterlinck’s play Pélleas et Mélisande:

Mélisande: [I love you.] Forever. Ever since I first saw you.

Pelléas: It is as if your voice had come over the sea in the spring! I have never heard it until today. It’s as though it had rained on my heart. You say those words so openly, like an angel answering questions. I can scarcely believe it, Mélisande. Why should you love me? Why do you love me? Is it true what you say? Were you making it up? Were you lying to me just to make me feel happy?

Mélisande: No, I never tell lies. I only lie to your brother.

Pelléas: Oh, the way you say that! Your voice, your voice! It is as fresh and as clear as water! It is like pure spring water on my lips. It is like pure spring water on my hands. Give me your hands, let me take your hands. Oh, your hands are so tiny! I never knew you were so beautiful. I had never set eyes on anything as beautiful before. I could not rest, I kept searching everywhere in the house, I kept searching everywhere in the country, but never found the beauty I sought. And now at last I have found you. I have found you. I don’t believe there is anywhere on earth a woman more beautiful. Where are you? I don’t hear your breathing any more.

Debussy, Pelleas and Mellisande – 1902 (7:30 to 9)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxBzEUjwwfw

Mallarmé – from “Literature and Music” – Oxford speech, 1894: > text...

Pater (1839-1894) – from “Giorgione” (1877) in Studies in the Renaissance, Conclusion to Studies in the Renaissance (cancelled in 2^nd ed., then restored in 3^rd): texts...

Ravel, La Valse (Argerich and Freire) 9:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwBuhTZtDT0&list=RDmwBuhTZtDT0&start_radio=1

Debussy, La Mer – 1905 (Boston, Munch) 16:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOCucJw7iT8

Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring – 1913 – Beginning (Orch. de Paris, Boulez) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrOUYtDpKCc

Ending (L.A.Phil, Salonen) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSyOfJRmbLY -From“Poetics of Music” ’38: text...

Image of Debussy and Stravinsky.

Literature and Music - session 4 - Goethe, Liszt, Wagner, Nietzsche, Mahler

2019-03-01T12:19:00.000-05:00

Goethe (1749-1832) Faust, Part One (1808) ‘in Faust’s Study i’ (Oskar Werner) [4:00]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXHmwp4JkGk

excerpts from Faust, including Walpurgisnacht:

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Walpurgisnacht, continued: Mephisto Waltz No. 1 – 1859 [Van Cliburn, pianist):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o59zEOq1uBY

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

Wagner, Tristan and Isolde, Prelude – the Tristan chord (Solti and Vienna):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8EQcMurhAI

Liebestode, end of Act 3, Nina Stemme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8enypX74hU

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

In the 1880s, Nietzsche produced a devastating critique of Richard Wagner, announced his rupture with the German artist, who had influenced him, and accused him of embracing the repellant German Volkish (folk nationalist) movement and Antisemitism. The operas are criticized as manipulative, seducing the audience and making them passive. Wagner is seen as less than Bizet and, now, philosophically insignificant, and he has become a symptom of the broader "disease" affecting Europe: nihilism.

excerpt from The Twilight of the Idols:

excerpt from The Birth of Tragedy (1872):

also, Zarathustra's Midnight Song

Gustave Mahler (1860-1911) Symphony no. 3, 4^th move, Zarathustra’s midnight song (Meier):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aM9hezKudY

Symphony No. 1, 3^rd movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5A5tFyXQio

Literature and Music - session three - Schubert and Romantic poems

2019-03-01T12:10:00.003-05:00

See the previous post on Literature, Music, and Romanticism.

Coleridge (1772-1834): text of "Kubla Khan" and "The Eolian Harp"

Keats (1795-1821): text of "Ode to a Nightingale"

Schubert (1797-1828)

Schubert – Goethe’s Der Erlkönig D328 (The Erlking, 1815) – Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Gerald Moore (piano)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3nxyS8wf8E

Goethe’s Gretchen am Spinnrade D. 118 (Grechen at the spinning-wheel, 1814) - Rika Shiratsuchi, Mezzo-soprano; Malcolm Martineau, Piano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCTU972-oIg

Müller’s Der Lindenbaum D. 911 (from Winterreise – The Linden-tree, 1827) – Fischer-Dieskau and Alfred Brendel (Piano)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyxMMg6bxrg

Müller’s Die Leiermann D. 911 (from Winterreise – The Organ-grinder/The Hurdy-Gurdy Man, 1827) – Fischer-Dieskau and Brendel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIIS-UgixGE

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Dichterliebe op 48 no 10 (1840) – Hör' ich das Liedchen klingen (1823) - Fritz Wunderlich (tenor), Hubert Geisen (pianist)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT7OI-pOsOs

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856):

Hör ich das Liedchen klingen,

Das einst die Liebste sang,

So will mir die Brust zerspringen

Vor wildem Schmerzensdrang.

Es treibt mich ein dunkles Sehnen

Hinauf zur Waldeshöh,

Dort löst sich auf in Tränen

Mein übergroßes Weh.

I hear the little song sounding

that my beloved once sang,

and my heart wants to shatter

from the savage pain's pressure.

I am driven by a dark longing

up to the wooded heights;

there is dissolved in tears

my supremely great pain.

Chopin (1810-1843)

Fantasy on Polish Airs [Folk dance forms], op. 13 (1829) – performed by Kun Woo Paik, pianist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RaNIIVnHlk&index=5&list=PL7Ya_z08dGHlou9bva4kj2yDeaKU2UISm

Mazurka, Op. 17: No. 4 in A Minor (1831) [Horowitz, pianist]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmLvpJySb50

Literature and Music - session two - Mozart and Beethoven

2019-02-14T17:36:00.001-05:00

Rise of the Enlightenment after the Baroque: shared rule of the Bourgeoisie and the Aristocracy. For example, in England, Parliament (including the class of industrialists, business owners, professionals) and Monarchy.

What language can help to unify and streamline communication among these contending parties? The Classical era, partly homophonic music: melodies now within simpler harmonic structures.

Invention of Sonata form: themes in tonic & dominant, midpoint development, recapitulation. Invention of the new Opera as drama opening up conflict between individuals and society.

The new Classical Forms emphasize cohesion and integration of the whole as a communality: coherent, harmoniously ordered, testing and connecting the individual’s relationship to society.

Music – though supported by both the aristocratic court and the owning class – is by its wordless nature freed from the prosaic & didactic, from explicit aristocratic or bourgeois social representation.

Mozart (1756-1791)– Don Giovanni (c 1789)

Overture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nemAKvtXL8w

Act 1/15 ‘Fin ch'han dal vino’ (Hvorostovski)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTT2RkrBsAs

Mozart’s gift is to cast a light of harmonious and beneficent acceptance on all he composes, no matter how dark or disordered.

Don Juan as a product of the Renaissance:

Tirso da Molina, El Burlador de Sevilla -the trickster of Seville and the stone statue

-a 1630 quasi-tragedy about the exploits & punishment of a Renaissance libertine.

Moliere’s play of Don Juan (1665) exposed the hypocrisy of the aristocracy.

Don Juan became the subject of a 1680 novel about a picaresque rogue.

Mozart’s librettist Da Ponte drew on many sources for his tragi-comic drama: collision between the vulnerable but finally triumphant “normal” world of couples, family, both aristocratic and middle-class mores about women and money

versus the figure of the unique individual sensibility, which can model and define the emotions and spirits of the community, investing them with new power and energy, inviting others to enter a new life, and yet which like Don Quixote can seem foolish and grotesque: this is the figure of the Romantic Genius, an intense force of energy and imagination, beyond good and evil, yet capable of inspiring.

Act 1, #10 Renee Fleming as Donna Anna, prelude to “Or sai chi l’onore”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp8UTemmlq8

At 2:10 – “Silently he approached me and tried to embrace me. I tried to free myself but he seized me all the harder. I screamed, but no one came! With one hand he tried to quiet me, and with the other he seized me so hard that I already thought myself lost….Finally my despair, my horror of the deed so strengthened me that by dint of twisting, turning and bending I freed myself of him.”

Act 2/2 ‘Ah taci, ingiusto core’ – Donna Elvira (Carlos Alvarez, Anna Antonacci)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IwaqfepCgc

Act 2/14Finale: Commendatore (Samuel Ramey, Kurt Moll)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHSPT6LRDx4

Ending of complete opera (Furtwanger, Salzburg, 1953) at 2:50:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPYjqz7nToY

Requiem – (Peter Schreier - Staatskapelle Dresden)

“Requiem Aeternam” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsyPhvrEzPU

“Dies Irae” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARO7ZjsXSkE

“Lacrimosa” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE2muDZksP4

Beethoven (1770-1827) –

Music focused on developing the basic elements of the classical vocabulary - and also focused on projecting the power of the individual - in large upwelling passages displaying emotional force and zeroing in on play with elemental motifs.

Appassionata sonata – Barenboim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ak_7tTxZrk

Last sonata op. 111 – Trifonov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcFFxvG8pWg&t=6s

Symphony No. 9, finale (1824) – [text 1785: Ode to Joy, by Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805)]

Anja Harteros, Waltraud Meier, Peter Seiffert, René Pape, National Youth Choir of Great Britain, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim (Royal Albert Hall, July 2012) [7:30-12:00]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChygZLpJDNE&t=2s

Literature and Music - session one - introduction; Renaissance and Baroque

2019-02-05T23:31:00.001-05:00

The first session of this course for Siegel Senior Learning at CWRU establishes some backgrounds, including Renaissance links and texts, and offers the following excerpts:

Plato's view of music – from The Republic, Books 2 and 3 (circa 380 BC):

The introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state, since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions The new style, gradually gaining a lodgment, quietly insinuates itself into manners and customs; and from these it issues in greater force, making its way into mutual compacts; and from compacts it goes on to attack laws and constitutions, displaying the utmost impudence, until it ends by overturning everything, both in public and in private.

[Later, from Book 3:] And therefore, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the sound, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful – or [making the soul] of him who is ill-educated ungraceful…

Even so, as I maintain, neither we nor the guardians, whom we say that we have to [train in music], can ever become musical until we and they know the essential forms of temperance, courage, liberality, magnanimity, and their kindred, as well as the contrary forms, in all their combinations, and can recognize them and their images wherever they are found, not slighting them either in small things or great, but believing them all to be within the sphere of one art and study And when nobility of soul is observed in harmonious union with beauty of form, and both are cast from the same mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him who has an eye to see it.

Gregorian Chant – Salve Regina (circa 1050)

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve: to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus, O merciful, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAmydVsNMqM

Summer is a coming in – Reading rota, attributed to Wycombe (c 1260)

Sumer is icumen in, Spring has arrived, Lhude sing, cuccu; loudly sing, cuckoo! Groweth sed The seed is growing and bloweth med, And the meadow is blooming, And springth the wode nu; And the wood is coming into leaf now, Sing, cuccu! Sing, cuckoo! Awe bleteth after lomb, The ewe is bleating after her lamb, Lhouth after calue cu; The cow is lowing after her calf; Bulluc sterteth, The bullock is prancing, Bucke uerteth, The billy-goat farting, Murie sing, cuccu! Sing merrily, cuckoo! Cuccu, cuccu, Cuckoo, cuckoo, Wel singes thu, cuccu; You sing well, cuckoo, Ne swic thu naver nu. Never stop now. Sing, cuccu, nu; sing, cuccu; Sing, cuckoo, now; sing, cuckoo; Sing, cuccu; sing, cuccu, nu! Sing, cuckoo; sing, cuckoo, now!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Tk1JseYkU

Palestrina - Jesu, rex admirabilis – Gardiner (c 1580)

Latin text: Jesu, rex admirabilis et triumphator nobilis, dulcedo ineffabilis, totus desiderabilis, mane nobiscum, Domine, et nos illustra lumine, pulsa mentis caligine, mundum reple ducedine.

English translation: Jesus, wondrous king and noble conqueror, ineffable delight, wholly to be desired, remain with us, Lord, dispel the darkness of our minds and enlighten us with your light, fill the world with your sweetness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXQuOQccCWA

Petrarch (1304-1374), Sonnet - text of Madrigal by Monteverdi (1567-1655):

The zephr returns and the lovely weather stirs
the flowers and all the grassy family;

the swallows warble and the nightingale sings
and spring is clean and bright.

The fields smile and sky is serene.
Jove happily looks upon his child.

The air, water, and the land are full of love.
Every animal in love is reconfirmed.

But for weary me only the saddest sighs return
Which she -who took the keys to heaven with her-

Wrings from the deepest part or my heart

And the birds sing and the countryside flourishes
And when with a beautiful woman, such gentle honest acts
Become a harsh, wild and uncultivated desert.

Italian text

Zephiro torna, e 'i bel tempo rimena,
e i fiori et I'erbe, sua dolce famiglia,

et garrir Progne et pianger Philomena,
et primavera candida et vermiglia.

Ridono i prati, e 'I ciel si rasserena;
Giove s'allegra di mirar sua figlia;

I'aria et I'acqua et la terra e d'amor piena;
ogni animal d'amar si riconsiglia.

Ma per me, lasso, tornano i pili gravi
sospiri, che del cor profondo tragge
quella ch'al ciel se ne porte Ie chiavi;

et cantar augelletti, et fiorir piagge,
e 'n belle donne honeste atti soavi

sono un deserto, et fere aspre et selvagge.

Canzoniere 310^c

Monteverdi - Zefiro torna, e 'l bel tempo rimena (VI libro dei Madrigali) - Les Arts Florissants (c 1614)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wokuz7F7jGM

Shakespeare – Branagh’s “Much Ado About Nothing” - Act 2, Scene 3 (c 1612)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6z6LfdTNQg&t=171s

Twelfth Night (1602):

—opening of Act I, Scene i – the Duke speaks.

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again - it had a dying fall.

0, it came o'er my ear, like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour. Enough, no more,
T’is not so sweet now, as it was before.

o spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity

Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there,

Of what validity and pitch soe'er,

But falls into abatement, and low price,
Even in a minute; so full of shapes is fancy,
That it alone is high fantastical.

Handel – Dryden’s Ode for St Cecilia's Day HWV 76 Les Arts Florissants (c 1739)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbGI0tKriqo

Bach – St Matthew’s Passion – Erbarme Dich – 39 Aria – BWV 244 (c 1727). Delphine Galou, contralto; François-Marie Drieux, solo violin; Les Siècles, conducted by François-Xavier Roth; 2008.

Erbarme dich,
Have mercy,
Mein Gott, um meiner Zähren willen!
My God, for the sake of my tears!
Schaue hier,
Look here,
Herz und Auge weint vor dir
My heart and eyes weep before you
Bitterlich.
Bitterly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBeXF_lnj_M

"The Fall of the Berlin Wall - a novel" now completed - and circulating

2018-12-16T17:35:00.001-05:00

My now completed but unpublished novel “The Fall of the Berlin Wall” is about the musicians who appeared in my earlier novel “Hungry Generations” plus their families and friends – but now more than a decade and a half later. (In fact, the earlier novel - from iUniverse in 2004 - could logically and easily be published with "The Fall" as an 'origin story' or prequel.)

Jack Weinstein is now a successful composer, known for the symphonic “Hostage Music” commemorating the 1980 Iran hostage crisis. He is married to Sarah, the intense and irrepressible daughter of the late legendary Alexander Petrov. It is 1989 in Cleveland, where Jack is a college professor, and in late November, the couple’s marriage is collapsing. Jack and Sarah are visited during Thanksgiving week by her brother, Joseph Petrov, who is Jack’s closest friend and the hugely talented pianist son of Alexander. The week’s events are told by this trio of characters, and much of the novel revolves around Sarah – her suffering, her stinging repartee, and the friendships she forms and betrays.

Friendship itself is a force in the lives of these characters, its potential success or failure for her and Jack, for the two brothers-in-law, and for the group surrounding the three characters. Also, there is the surprising bonus of the magnificent music played and imagined here, including Jack’s plans for a work responding to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The idea that long-standing barriers can collapse infuses the partly Dostoyevskyan novel, its vision of politics, of music, and of the human beings brought to life in this poignant, tragicomic work. At the end of the short novel are six ‘origin’ stories evoking what has been at stake in the rich and startling past of many of the characters.

Here's a synopsis of the work:

The Fall of the Berlin Wall – a novel with stories

Daniel Melnick (216-378-9302; danielcmelnick@gmail.com)

Two events in November 1989 mark the lives of the novel’s characters. One is the death of a woman discovered naked in the snow during a massive storm buffeting Cleveland on Thanksgiving. The other is the fall, two weeks earlier, of the Berlin Wall, and that upturning of the old order corresponds to a desire completely to change their lives for the characters.

Jack Weinstein wants to save his marriage to Sarah, the intense daughter of the late legendary pianist Alexander Petrov. He tries to confront her dissatisfaction and her shifting allegiances – whether to him, to her lover Dima, to her brother Joseph, or to her own unstable self. Sarah and Jack are in their forties and have a nearly sixteen-year-old daughter, Sue, who struggles in her own right.

Sarah’s brother, Joseph, is visiting this Thanksgiving week. He finds himself in the middle of the couple’s conflicts, and his role is made more difficult by the deep allegiance he feels to both his sister and his brother-in-law. The week’s events are told by this trio of characters. Joseph and Jack are musicians. Joseph Petrov is, like his late father, a brilliant piano virtuoso, and Jack is a classical composer; one of his compositions has just been nominated for a Grammy in contemporary classical music.

The Weinsteins’ friends have their own turbulence. And friendship – both healing and broken – becomes an issue in their lives. The Blacks, who live around the corner, are about to declare bankruptcy, for Jacob has been denied tenure and become a ‘freeway professor,’ teaching one class here, another there. The Sinclairs are mutual friends, and especially Robert Sinclair becomes the target of Jacob’s bitterness about his life.

One of the Weinsteins’ best friends is an artist and a bohemian of sorts, Tom Mubar, who is divorced and shares custody of his seventeen-year-old son, Paul. When Sarah’s affair with Dima collapses, she is drawn to Tom, who will understand – she believes – what a disaster her life has become. He has his hands full with his own urgent problems, and does not reciprocate her feelings.

Everything comes to a head when the Weinsteins celebrate Thanksgiving with their friends and Joseph. At dinner, disastrous confrontations erupt from the tensions brewing all week, and Sarah, already depressed and disoriented, plummets into potentially suicidal despair.

“The Fall of the Berlin Wall” is a poignant, tragicomic portrait of a marriage in trouble, of confusions in love and friendship, and of what may endure our collisions – whether it be love, art and music, or simply the flux and welter of our conflicting passions and needs. The short novel is followed by six stories evoking the rich and startling past of several of these characters.

(Altogether, the work is 174 pages, about 51,000 words.)

a new novel: The Fall of the Berlin Wall

2018-10-25T14:27:00.002-04:00

I'm currently working on a new novel, which is about three-quarters finished. It is tentatively titled "The Fall of the Berlin Wall" and takes place in Thanksgiving week after that November 9th, 1989, event, and it imagines what happened to the characters from my 2004 novel "Hungry Generations," which was set in 1972-3. A synopsis will be posted on this blog in a few weeks, once I've completed the novel.

Many elements, though, are clear. The children of the late virtuoso pianist Alexander Petrov return. Sarah is married to Jack Weinstein, a composer, who was the focus of the earlier novel, and they have moved to Cleveland where he teaches at his alma mater, the Institute of Music there. After sixteen years the marriage is now troubled. Sarah's brother, Joseph, is visiting them for the week. Having recently reread Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" again, I couldn't resist writing a series of dramatic parties into the novel with the accompanying turbulent confrontations; also, my characters are not wholly unrelated to Myshkin, Rogoshin, and particularly Nastasya. Finally, characters from several of my other fictions were made to live in Cleveland, and in the new novel, they become significant - Rachel and Jacob Black, Tom Mubar, May and Robert Sinclair, Vladimir Kline, and Juliet and Sammy Weisberg. So "The Fall of the Berlin Wall" is, in part, a Cleveland novel.

There's plenty of music in the novel, as well. However, whereas the music in "Hungry Generations" became part of the experimental form of that novel, it's presented much more straightforwardly in the new work. Here's the opening:

Prologue

Friday, November 24, 1989

It was the wind that made it worse. Twigs were carried in the air, and dead leaves flew by. On Thanksgiving yesterday, the black clouds of a huge arctic storm had dropped from the north like a giant descending on the city, a massive primordial force obliterating everything that was familiar, felling trees, and dropping a foot of snow on the Heights. And now this morning, the wind kept blowing more snow east into Cleveland Heights with its the hilly neighborhoods, the first foothills of the Appalachians. Its houses, built in the first decades of the twentieth century, were porous to the raging winds. The old double-glazed windows rattled violently. The storm blew wires down and pilot lights out, and with few exceptions, there was no heat or light for blocks on end.

When Jacob Black’s heater went out this morning, he descended the stairs to the darkened basement to inspect the pilot light. When he directed a flashlight into it, he saw there was no way he could relight it, for without electricity, the newly installed heater refused to start. So much refused to work in this old house – and in his shithole of a life, as well. A stream of unspoken obscenity-filled his mind as he trudged back up the stairs. Rachel and little Mikey waited at the top. When she heard what the situation was, she picked up the kitchen phone. It still worked, and she called Sarah and Jack, who lived up the block.

“Yes to both questions,” Jack answered. “We have electricity, and come on over. We’ll wait out the storm together. Sarah is still sleeping, but she’ll wake up soon.”

So they put on their heaviest winter coats, boots, hats, and gloves as the wind buffeted the windows and pressed in on the house. Rachel carried a packed purse, Jacob a valise with a shoulder strap, and four-year-old Mikey his favorite brown bear with its button eyes, in a plastic bag. Together they stepped onto the porch. The wind temporarily paralyzed them, and its bursting intermittent hum poured from the sky. It had begun yesterday on Thanksgiving and had not relented. Holding onto his son’s hand and gripping his wife’s arm, Jacob inched forward down the porch steps and into the blasting snow. In the driveway, their boots sank in the snow drifts. Small branches flew by, disintegrating in flight.

“I’ll carry you,” Joseph said and lifted the boy onto his shoulders.

“It’s so cold,” Mikey said.

“We’ll be there soon,” Rachel said.

“I’m scared.”

They trudged slowly through the snow banks for half a block, could hardly see through the white-out of blowing snow, and finally came to the wooded, untamed lot edging Jack Weinstein’s property. Barely visible next to the lot was his big home on the corner with its snowy stairs and the inundated porch.

In the thick woods a few yards away, there seemed to be a partially buried, snow-covered deer or other animal, and Rachel stopped to stare at the curious sight. Jacob, with Mikey on his back, continued to Jack’s house and stairs.

She carefully stepped off the sidewalk, walked through snow to the frozen form, and began to reach toward it. She suddenly recognized the snow-encrusted naked woman, and she suppressed a scream.

A Burnt offering - a nuclear fable about Israel and Iran

2018-07-14T21:29:00.002-04:00

I've radically reconceived and expanded a novel about Israel to focus on the threat of a nuclear exchange with Iran (the work before this revision was short and outdated). Now taking place in the present, it involves the dangerous Israeli relationship with Iran - and also the psyche and complex identity of Israel and of an Israeli family. Here is a brief synopsis of the much expanded and updated novel now available from Amazon - https://amzn.to/2ZTHaRg:

A Burnt Offering – a fable

Daniel C. Melnick – 25805 Fairmount Blvd. Apt 303, Beachwood, Ohio 44122.

(216) 376-2649 danielcmelnick@gmail.com

This compelling and thought-provoking novel unites a version of the biblical fable, the Sacrifice of Isaac, with a tale about Israeli Intelligence when the country seems on the verge of being attacked by nuclear-armed Iranian missiles. Ari Schneider, the head of Special Operations, believes that he must act, even if as a maverick, to warn world leaders that they must act to stop the movement toward nuclear war. He discloses to them that his operatives in foreign capitals have received weapons of warning which he alone knows how to recall – ‘small’ tactical nuclear bombs from the Israeli arsenal.

His father, Rami, a retired diplomat and elderly survivor of the Holocaust, struggles to confront and intercede in Ari’s actions. There is also a clandestine group of Palestinians whose leader plots to assault an Israeli installation in Jerusalem. And finally, in this moral fable, there is the Schneiders’ adolescent son, Moshe, who courageously confronts his father with knowledge he has gleaned from his scientist cousin in America about the horror of nuclear war. The unfolding fable advances in tandem with Ari’s undercover operations to create a unique and disturbing short novel.

As the action of the ‘special operation’ heightens, the parable becomes more terrifying and develops in mystery, complexity, and tragic intensity. In a series of confrontations with his wife, daughter, son, and his father, Rami, Ari still resists despite the tension of self-doubt in him, and in the climactic encounter between father and son, Rami argues that the ages-old struggle marking the past of the Jews must also mark their future, and that nuclear weapons can never be used in a just cause. Ari holds fast, and in an ultimate attack on his son, echoing the Sacrifice of Isaac, Rami compels himself to tell Ari something about his origins that invalidates all his assumptions about his identity. The double bind of his fate collapses in on him, and with nothing more to hold him up, he suffers a suicidal breakdown.

Rami’s final monologue reveals his lie to his son. The old man is harrowed by the responsibility of how to act for peace in a world of extreme and pervasive violence; such are the conditions that Ari tried to face with his desperate acts and which now the world at large confronts.

[The nuclear fable is approximately 190 pages long – about 47,000 words.] Available: https://amzn.to/2ZTHaRg

New opening for "Pathological States"

2018-06-11T14:08:00.002-04:00

The first two chapters of "Pathological States - a novel" are now published as the ending of "A Burnt Offering - a fable" - titled "Dr. Morris Weisberg - an introduction" - here's the cover from Amazon.com:

https://amzn.to/2ZTHaRg.

Prologue for "Pathological States - a novel"

The best way to put yourself in a novel, an old friend once told me, is to leave yourself out. Not only have I removed myself here, but this prologue also leaves out my protagonist, spry but aging as he is, Dr. Morris Weisberg, pathologist and sometime Chief of Laboratory. Here, instead, you are to meet an antagonist, Dr. Bill Smith, who will appear later but significantly at the Montecito Veterans Hospital, located on the northern rim of Los Angeles in the desiccated hills some miles from suburban Northridge. Of course, these designations – hero or antagonist – are provisional, even questionable, and you must exercise your inalienable right as reader to revise and even to reverse them. For example, it would be possible to present Dr. Smith as a great wielder of knife and scalpel, a slayer of disease, a marbled figure of power and grandeur.

In the event, however, the surgeon seemed perfectly ordinary: not too short, nor too tall, and not too fat, though with a round face which was sometimes clouded, for his mouth could appear disapproving, and his brown eyes were somewhat assessive behind corrective lenses. On this June morning, dressed in his surgical garb, he wiggled his stiff fingers into latex gloves and felt how recalcitrant they were as he forced them in. Last night had been what he called a long, hard night, but let bygones be bygones, he thought. Smiling and a bit bleary, he strode confidently into the brightly lit surgical theater. He would perform an exploratory, which he invariably enjoyed.

The poor girl was dying, but now prepped and anesthetized, she was stretched out on the operating table.

“Good morning, Dr. Smith,” the nurses and the new anesthesiologist, Dr. Maury, said – he was a handsome man; swarthy was the term. The line of his strong neck led down to broad shoulders and what looked to be a lean, fine physique. Dr. Maury smiled politely at him, and Dr. Smith immediately turned to look at what was on the menu today.

The skin of the abdomen was bared before him as he picked up the scalpel with his stiffened fingers. Perhaps he would give her a few months more of life, he thought as he automatically cut through flesh, fat, and muscle. His nurse placed clamps and a drain so no blood welled in the cavity. At its bottom, there it was, the pancreas riddled with cancer. Searching for spreading metastases in liver and spleen, his rough fingers pushed the pancreas aside.

The heart monitor began irregularly to beep, and it stopped.

“Dr. Smith, her heart has…”

A slight tremor convulsed the body on the table, and Dr. Smith pulled his bloody gloved hands away.

“Adrenaline. Syringe,” he said as he glanced about, numb and unsteady. Dr. Maury was staring alarmed at him.

He plunged the needle into the heart. Immediately, he knew it had missed its target, and he lifted, shifted, and plunged it once more into the chamber of the heart.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The novel is a fictionalized memoir about my family, with names changed. My late parents were secular Jews and devoted to classical music. Of my two (retired) brothers, one is a photographer, and the other is a poet. Something like the novel’s disaster at work and desperation at home did descend on the family around the year 1962, though at the time I was away from home as a freshman in college. The four family member take up the telling of the chapters, though I do record and comment in the telling. For the most part, then, I leave myself out of the tale – which may be the best way to put yourself in, as I mention a novelist friend of mine told me.

Here’s a brief summary of the novel: It is the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Cold War hydrogen bomb testing. Dr. Morris Weisberg studies the effects of nuclear radiation and the causes of cancer, and he, his wife, and their turbulent sons live in suburban Los Angeles. Each family member strives to find some pleasure and affirmation, whether in science, art, sex or music, as they face the distortion and emptiness beneath the surface beauty of California life. Dr. Weisberg is Chief of Laboratory at the Montecito Veterans Hospital, where a surgeon causes a death during an operation. When Morris discovers the truth, his Hospital Director tries to cover up the malpractice. Crises descend, then, at work as well as in the family.

The novel is rich and compelling for its drama of emotional abuse and sexual awakening, its non-nostalgic view of L.A. in the sixties and of growing up as well as growing old there, and its picture of the explosion of American power in the Kennedy years. There are also the roles played by science and music in the life of Morris Weisberg, the sense of Jewish-American identity after the Holocaust, and finally the occasional humorous echo of Don Quixote.

April 24, 1915: The Ash Tree imagines

2018-04-24T16:18:00.000-04:00

103 years ago today, April 24th, the leaders of the Armenian community in Constantinople-now Istanbul-were arrested and then hanged or deported. So began the Armenian genocide in Turkey. Chapter 1 of "The Ash Tree-a novel" imagines what Armen Ararat witnessed on April 24, 1915.

"The Promise" - a movie about the Armenian Genocide - shown at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage

2017-12-26T23:34:00.002-05:00

Two showings of "The Promise," dramatizing the 1915 Genocide of the Armenians in Turkey, on December 10 were sold out at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in the Cleveland area - Beachwood, Ohio. Each showing was followed by a panel discussion led by Daniel Melnick, author of "The Ash Tree," the 2015 novel about the Armenian American family of a survivor of the Armenian Genocide.

"The Ash Tree" on the shortlist for the biennial William Saroyan International Writing Prize

2016-07-13T14:25:00.000-04:00

"The Ash Tree" - my novel about the California family of a survivor of the 1915 Armenian Genocide - was shortlisted for Stanford University's biennial William Saroyan International Writing Prize for fiction. It is the sole shortlisted novel with Armenian content. The final selection for the prize will be announced within a month. See and like the Facebook page for more information at https://www.facebook.com/theashtreeanovel/

Revision of "Pathological States" finished 2016-17

2016-06-14T22:55:00.000-04:00

I've placed the revised first chapter of "Pathological States" (replacing the original first chapter) in the blog entry for October 4, 2010 (which so far has almost 4000 views). With this new version, the search for an agent is resuming!
Here is a possible cover image:

Here's a synopsis:

“Pathological States” - a novel of about 67,000 words, 238 pages,

by Daniel Melnick; email: danielcmelnick@gmail.com

It is 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis and hydrogen bomb testing, of Eichmann’s execution and the Telstar satellite. Dr. Morris Weisberg is a sixty-one year old pathologist, Chief of Laboratory, and a classical music lover and amateur violinist. Medicine is an obsession for him, and a devotion to truth is essential, he feels, in order to keep alive his professional values, which he finds under attack at his hospital.

Both the doctor and his wife, Sarah, are secular, educated Jews; they were born in Europe near the beginning of the twentieth century, and each was brought to America at an early age. Their mutual love of music brought them together in the 1920s, and now in 1962, the two of them are attempting to bear their chalice through the denatured suburbia of L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. Their worlds of music, family, medicine, and suburban survival are evoked in all their tragicomic intensity and instability.

At home in Northridge, the Weisbergs have raised two sons, and the family’s story is told by each family member in turn. Gene and Albert are now in their twenties and return this year to the suburban household. The young men—one of them is straight, the other gay—act out their needs and resentments, and the suburban household begins to fill with revelations of excess and abuse.

At work, Morris unearths a disastrous instance of unprofessional conduct and a cover-up reaching to the office of the Hospital Director. As the pathologist struggles with his ethical responsibilities and the threat to his career, buried truths erupt both at work and at home. He tries to control his rage and disorientation, only to plummet deeper into depression. The heartbreaking struggle persists in him, though, to affirm his love of science and of music, despite the despair he experiences in sunny California and early sixties America.

By the end of “Pathological States,” Morris Weisberg becomes a moving, larger-than-life Dr. Quixote, both noble and destructive. This eloquent and powerful novel zooms in close to Morris’ tragicomic struggle and pans far out to see what signs of reconciliation and healing endure in his time and place.

Video of Interview about "The Ash Tree" on the Joan Quinn Profiles

2016-06-14T21:45:00.000-04:00

Here's a link to my interview in late April of 2015 about "The Ash Tree" - on the Joan Quinn Profiles (a cable arts interview show). At first it took quite a while to load, but it seems to be working now. Hope it's interesting and enjoyable. [Highlight the web address below and click on the "go to" link.]

http://www.garygarver.com/entertainment/JoanQuinn/joanquinn15865.html

Lecture on the Armenian Genocide

2016-04-02T10:32:00.000-04:00

If you are in Cleveland, hopefully you can attend this significant lecture April 4 at CWRU on the historical ramifications of the Armenian Genocide - the lecture is featured in the following article:

http://m.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/arts_and_entertainment/cleveland-humanities-festival-explores-armenian-connection-to-holocaust/article_d5b55f54-f818-11e5-9ce9-2bfe73107c71.html

Show of Jeanette Arax Melnick's paintings - a Plain Dealer news article about the Beachwood Library show this month

2015-12-03T20:11:00.000-05:00

comments

Here's a link to the YouTube video of Jeanette's show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40YY0m6yyaw .

Beachwood artist explores Armenia, geometry, Sid Vicious and folk art in exhibit

Art is always personal. But it goes beyond that in the case of Jeanette Arax Melnick, who will exhibit her works at the Beachwood Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. (John Petkovic/The Plain Dealer)

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By John Petkovic, The Plain Dealer
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on December 03, 2015 at 2:15 PM, updated December 03, 2015 at 2:35 PM

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Art is always personal. But it goes beyond that in the case of Jeanette Arax Melnick.

Yes, there is a personal side in works by the Beachwood artist, who will exhibit her paintings at the Beachwood Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library during the month of December.

(The show opens at 2 p.m. Sunday at the library, 25501 Shaker Blvd, Cleveland. For more info, go to cuyahogalibrary.org/Branches/Beachwood.aspx or call 216-831-6868.)

You can see it in "The Quince Tree," a work that was inspired by a photo of her and her father, taken when she was a little girl, in 1946. The photo is in the work itself, along with photos of her grandchildren, children and husband.

But her relationship with the world is as much spatial one – in which she absorbs aspects of it through the senses or through patterns rather than just the heart or mind.

"Sometimes I just look at the world and see all these geometric shapes and I see aspects of my paintings in them," says Arax Melnick. "Like right now I'm sitting in a room looking at pillows or I could be looking at an oriental carpet and finding interesting patterns."

There is little pattern when it comes to divining the Fresno, Ca. native's style – which shoehorns folk art and "museum type art," as she likes to say.

"Art was always my companion and I never sought out to follow a particular style or painter," she says. "I started to study painting at (University of California, Berkley), but I switched to history because I realized that I wanted to be my own painter."

She delved into medieval history, along with the "flatness" found in its art. She has created in the shadows of a family history that extends back to the Armenian genocide of 1915 – which led to her family settling in California.

"Armenian history is very complicated, especially with Turkey denying the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians," says Arax Melnick, whose husband Daniel Melnick recently released a novel that honors the memory of the genocide. "And yet that complication has given me a feeling for the suffering of all mankind."

"As a child, I was inspired looking at old Armenian manuscripts and seeing these people with big brown eyes and soulful looks," she adds. "They look like they've suffered and yet survive and go on."

Sid Vicious -- the English punk from a much later time, 1970s London – captivated her in a very different way.

"Sid Vicious," one of works by Jeanette Arax Melnick that will be on display at the Beachwood Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library.John Petkovic/The Plain Dealer

"I never listened to his music, though I know Aaron and Lennie have," says Arax Melnick, referring to her sons, co-founders of legendaryCleveland hardcore band Integrity. "I just loved his face and the zippers."

For years, the painting hung at the old Arabica on Coventry. Arax Melnick received a number of offers for it, but chose to hold onto it.

"It's hard to give up on that Sid Vicious," she says. "I've never looked at the money side of it."

It's all matter of perspective, even when it comes to art.

"I tend to avoid perspective and I think it's given my work a certain character," she says. "I'll have a table that looks like it's floating and could see it as an illusion, but to me it's just how I see it and see the world. So I guess you could say the world is an illusion, too."

Plain Dealer story and Mirror-Spectator review of The Ash Tree - a novel about the aftermath in America of the Armenian genocide

2015-10-18T07:48:00.000-04:00

Here's the link to John Petkovic's fine article about "The Ash Tree" in The Plain Dealer:
http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/10/cleveland_author_honors_armeni.html

In addition, let me place here the also fine review of the novel which appeared on October 10 in the Armenian Mirror-Spectator (the text is reproduced below):

Here is the text:

Commemorations are a fixture in our public lives. We mark dates to call to mind a particular event or to teach a new generation the importance of a momentous occurrence. Much was made in the general media in late April of the Armenian Genocide of 1915; however, the public remembrances were fleeting – a quick story in the nightly television or radio broadcast or a newspaper story. Adding to the fragility of the stories is that this is a centenary remembrance; most, if not all, of the eyewitnesses are gone. Who will re-tell the facts and explore the ramifications of early twentieth century tragedies? Both historians and fiction writers offer different approaches and perspectives.

One such narrative is Daniel Melnick's THE ASH TREE which strikes a delicate balance between history and fiction. Permeating the book are references to actual events and places. And to sensory memories of “plump oil-cured olives in Constantinople…anchovies, the brine washed off [having] the savor of a kiss…and oranges [tasting] of sunlight and the tree.” The sense of place is strong, whether Turkey, Armenia, or California and Fresno.

A basic timeline of the book takes one family from 1915 to 1972. The prologue, however, opens in 1972 California with a death in the family of Armen and Artemis Ararat. This violent death ruptures their world. It will take the rest of the story to explore why this death occurred and to understand the characters who inhabit this world.

Although both from Armenian families, Armen Ararat and Artemis Haroutian are of different temperaments and outlooks. When we first meet Armen, he witnesses neighbors and teachers being killed in Turkey. Some 10 years later as a student at Berkeley, he remembers his European past and honors his relationship to it. He feels that all the immigrants had been permanently scarred by what they carried with them from Turkey. In contrast, Connecticut-born Artemis Haroutian did not want to marry a man born in the old country and “had always wanted a suitor who was free of the agony of 1915...not weighted down by foreignness and history.” These two positions haunt the characters and the novel. Melnick gives voice to the ambivalence of any group in a diaspora – to hold sacred the memory of the past and to forge a new, more hopeful life.

The strength of the novel is its careful summoning of a particular world that is the Armenian community centered in Fresno and the universality of the human inter-actions that makes this applicable to all. Early on in the novel, Armen's landlady says that what is important is that the family survives. Armen and Artemis build a life together for their children, Tigran, Garo and Juliet. They give up their early dreams of lives centered on poetry and art and focus on the difficult reality of raising a family. Although he is a recognized poet, Armen is known more for his business dealings. He struggles with the thought that his mastery of Armenian has no place in American life. Language eludes them both. We see this through Melnick's lens which does use language with sensitivity and clarity.

As the Ararat children grow, they become part of the wider world, forging relationships outside the Armenian community. Marriage and business dealings extend their boundaries. The novel takes on a more intimate and emotional layer as Juliet marries Sammy Weisberg, a young Jewish man.

It is here that history and narrative fiction most strongly overlap. Juliet and Sammy mirror the author and his wife, Jeanette Arax Melnick whose painting is the cover art of THE ASH TREE. The Ararat family is based on the Arax family; yet, there is so much more of the interior lives of these characters inhabiting these pages.

As the novel comes full circle from 1972 back to 1972, we can see that one death can stand for all losses and bereavements. Geography cannot change the fragility of life, but memory helps to offer solace. Daniel Melnick honors both those who know Armenian loss and those who wish to understand such losses in our lives generally.

Video of Eskejian Museum reading from The Ash Tree

2015-09-19T23:08:00.000-04:00

Here's a post for my blog of the YouTube link to the presentation of and reading from "The Ash Tree" at L.A.'s Eskejian Museum (thank you Eskejian and Maggie): (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYB35mGO2lI)

Daniel Melnick - "The Ash Tree" 04/30/2015

A book reading and conversation with author, Daniel Melnick - a professor emeritus of english at cleaveland state university and moderator Mark Arax

YOUTUBE.COM

an article about the Beachwood reading for "The Ash Tree" plus two readers' reviews on Amazon

2015-08-17T23:13:00.000-04:00

Here is an article from the August issue of the Beachwood, Ohio, city magazine about my reading of The Ash Tree on June 15 at the Beachwood branch of the Cuyahoga County Library. As I wrote before here and on the novel's blog, I was very moved to see so many people there; the librarian said the capacity crowd in the library's reading room was about 100. Here it is:

Also, here are two reviewers' comments on Amazon:

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

“Who truly were the people she loved? ” she asks.

By Danielle R. Shapazian on June 7, 2015

Format: Hardcover

“The Ash Tree” is a compelling, beautifully-rendered story of the Ararat family of Fresno. A firm, opinionated woman stands as its matriarch. Artistic sensibilities secure its core.

As a mother and grandmother, Artemis Ararat admits she doesn’t know it all. “Who truly were the people she loved?” she asks. What was her responsibility in understanding them? What was her responsibility to herself?

These questions are pertinent to every family. Not every family is brave enough to ask them.

A family grows strong by maneuvering through its layers: the mechanics of everyday life weighed against an individual’s deepest dreams. Proximity of fate is rarely enough. Personalities must be respected and conflicts negotiated, spirited by an unfailing love.

If a family is fortunate, its vulnerabilities will be tempered by its strengths. “The Ash Tree” shows how parents and children can lean together through triumph and tragedy, hands joined in good faith, to treasure the sum of its parts.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? YesNo

A gripping family saga set against the backdrop of the Armernian Genocide

By E.L. Jay on June 4, 2015

Format: Kindle Edition

This remarkable family drama begins 100 years ago in the midst of the Armenian Genocide. We see the evolution of the Ararats as they evolve from Armenian-American newcomers struggling to grab a foothold in the parched California landscape to fully realized Americans, less hyphenated, but still grappling with the kinds of problems that beset families no matter the time or location. We feel the pull of the Old World even as the younger generation strives for the prosperity, success and freedom afforded by America. We witness intense interpersonal conflicts and nuanced devotion between the main characters- conflicts and devotion that are mirrored by the passion of many for Armenia and by others for the promise of a new life in America. And we experience the pain of loss from the shattering tragedy that threatens to destroy all they have worked for. The characters are unforgettable, the language is melodious, the history is compelling.

Comment Was this review helpful to you? YesNo

"The Ash Tree" now generally available.

2015-07-27T14:14:00.000-04:00

"The Ash Tree" is now available to libraries and independent bookstores through Baker & Taylor, and I hope you'll encourage your local library and indie bookstore to order it!
Here again is a brief summary: "The Ash Tree" (ISBN 9780981854762) tells a timeless story of the romance and marriage between an American Armenian girl and her immigrant husband who survived the 1915 Armenian Genocide in Turkey.
In the aftermath of the Genocide from the twenties to the early seventies, the couple and their three children become vivid, quintessentially American characters, only for tragedy to find them again, echoing the staggering loss of 1915.
Its cover painting with its frayed and white-washed frame is by the author’s wife, Jeanette Melnick. Lovingly produced and brilliantly structured to combine history and fictionalized memoir, The Ash Tree is an important, beautifully written novel of survival, new life, and heartbreak.