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A Lost Paradise: Early Reminiscences
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373 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1955
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October 14, 2018
A long but engrossing memoir of a Russian Jewish boyhood at the turn of the last century, taking the reader from Vitebsk (in present day Belarus), to the streets of the Lower East Side of New York, to a modest but personally momentous debut as a pianist on a concert stage.
I'll be honest: when I read a chapter of A Lost Paradise as an excerpt in an anthology, part of what led me to seek out the whole book was my lifelong fondness for Sydney Taylor's All of a Kind Family series, set in the same time and place, with its cheerful and engaging portrayal of a large happy Jewish family (whose poverty barely registers with the reader). Chotzinoff's book, while also cheerful in tone, rather unsurprisingly shows a rather grimmer, less rose-colored side of immigrant life. Sydney Taylor certainly never had anything to say about the smell of "ship" (perhaps better left undescribed here), which according to Chotzinoff clung to the person and clothing of newly arrived immigrants for months, even years after they emerged from the bilge of steerage, nor does Taylor give any sense of the currents of socialism and anarchy which were flowing around the Lower East Side at the time, which this book does.
That being said, apart from appreciating Chotzinoff's book as a kind of corrective to the All of a Kind Family books (which I do still love), I was also drawn to the musical aspect of the memoir. Much of the book is taken up with the exigencies, rewards, and occasional absurdities of trying to scrape together a musical education in highly adverse conditions. Chotzinoff's passion for music puts him at odds with the religious orthodoxy of his upbringing, and the book ends with him making a break, at least emotionally, from his loving but suffocating extended family and their culture. I learned after I finished reading that he ultimately became a producer and musical director at NBC, in the 1950s -- at that point, most likely, he no longer smelled of ship.
I'll be honest: when I read a chapter of A Lost Paradise as an excerpt in an anthology, part of what led me to seek out the whole book was my lifelong fondness for Sydney Taylor's All of a Kind Family series, set in the same time and place, with its cheerful and engaging portrayal of a large happy Jewish family (whose poverty barely registers with the reader). Chotzinoff's book, while also cheerful in tone, rather unsurprisingly shows a rather grimmer, less rose-colored side of immigrant life. Sydney Taylor certainly never had anything to say about the smell of "ship" (perhaps better left undescribed here), which according to Chotzinoff clung to the person and clothing of newly arrived immigrants for months, even years after they emerged from the bilge of steerage, nor does Taylor give any sense of the currents of socialism and anarchy which were flowing around the Lower East Side at the time, which this book does.
That being said, apart from appreciating Chotzinoff's book as a kind of corrective to the All of a Kind Family books (which I do still love), I was also drawn to the musical aspect of the memoir. Much of the book is taken up with the exigencies, rewards, and occasional absurdities of trying to scrape together a musical education in highly adverse conditions. Chotzinoff's passion for music puts him at odds with the religious orthodoxy of his upbringing, and the book ends with him making a break, at least emotionally, from his loving but suffocating extended family and their culture. I learned after I finished reading that he ultimately became a producer and musical director at NBC, in the 1950s -- at that point, most likely, he no longer smelled of ship.
Displaying 1 of 1 review