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Sept. 23, 2011
Love affair takes long journey
Measuring Up is about two lifelong friends who meet in Palestine.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Sometimes we pay so much attention to detail that we miss what’s important. In the character of David, author Jack Wassermann has created the epitome of the person who can’t see the forest for the trees; at least not until late in life.
Measuring Up, which was published earlier this year, follows the relationship of Shoshana and David, who fell in love with each other when they were kids, although they didn’t know it then. It is told from Shoshana’s perspective, and her first impression of David, when they met as young kids, was “inchworm.”
“David wanted to cover every small square of territory around him, to walk its edges, feel it round, weigh it, catalogue it, fit it into the intricate Tinkertoy construction that was always taking shape inside his head,” observes Shoshana. “I began to see that, everywhere he looked, something lay ready for him to discover, ready to peel open to his appraising senses.”
And yet, when David’s father dies after an extended illness, David is at a painful loss to remember anything about him, even what he looked like. This is one of several aspects of the novel behind which there is more than a grain of truth, where Wassermann’s fictional world overlaps with his own.
Wassermann was born in Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1929. His family immigrated to Palestine in the mid-1930s.
“I think it was my mother who came closest to understanding the likelihood of the coming Holocaust,” Wassermann told the Independent in an e-mail interview. “Since they were businesspeople in Germany, they could fulfil the British Palestine Mandate’s entry requirements for Jews. They lost little time in establishing themselves in Akhusat Schmuel on Mount Carmel in a building that became the Pension Wassermann, the prototype of what in the book became the Pension Reich.
“Like David Reich, I lost my father when I was eight, and the book was started a dozen years ago as an attempt to remember this father. As with David, I did not succeed, though without the traumatic experiences that I manufactured for David. His love for chamber music lives on in my wife and myself. I never became a professional musician, however. (I did as a young man study the bassoon but I could never overcome my nervous response when I was asked to play in public.)”
Wassermann added, “The sailplane competition below the pension building did in fact take place [as well] and, at its end I, like David, seized the hand of a visiting girl and led her off on an ill-fated odyssey. Shoshana is an invention, necessary so that David’s plight could be viewed by an intimate outsider.”
Of course, there are many creative characters and situations in Measuring Up that don’t overlap with Wassermann’s life. Though Wassermann and his mother ended up moving to the United States, as do David and his mother, their reception and what followed is very different.
“With the death of my father, my mother sold the pension and applied to my uncles in Buffalo, N.Y., for the necessary affidavits (to guarantee that they would be responsible for our welfare),” shared Wassermann about his own life. “When these came through, we set off by plane in early 1941 to Karachi, from there, by a two-day train journey, to a two-week stay in Bombay (now Mumbai) and, from there, on a U.S. President Lines freighter/passenger ship on a nearly four-week sea voyage to New York City.
“The Buffalo uncles were not very kind to my mother and, as soon as it was possible, she took me back to New York City, where she began work as a skilled office manager in the garment district. She died in 1950, aged 65, but not before she had briefly met Selma, my Brooklyn-born wife-to-be.
“Selma has been a schoolteacher all her working life and is now professor emerita, retired from SFU [Simon Fraser University]. I have become a writer-editor, initially for Scholastic Magazines and Book Services, then as a freelancer,” said Wassermann, who has a master’s in musicology.
In Measuring Up, David becomes a world-renowned classical musician and composer, while Shoshana becomes a successful silversmith and artist, specializing in Yemenite filigree work (avodat Temanim). They cross paths several times in their lives, but find happiness together elusive, unlike Wassermann, who has been married for 61 years. Shoshana and David also travel and live in various places in the world, but never make it to Canada; again unlike their creator.
“We arrived in Vancouver in 1966,” said Wassermann of he and his wife, who have a daughter, two grandsons and a great-granddaughter. “Since then, we have felt blessed to be able to live in this gorgeous city, and to be able to become Canadian citizens.”
It is not surprisingly, given the intricacies of the story, that Measuring Up took Wassermann so long to complete. “I spent a dozen years writing, rewriting and polishing it,” he said. “Fortunately, my mystery novel, about to be published, did not take nearly as long to put together. I don’t intend to live another dozen years.”
Subtitled “An A.J. Carlin Mystery,” it would seem that, at least, Wassermann, is intending to continue writing. His talents would be wasted if he didn’t. Measuring Up is a compelling story, even though it wanders a bit near the end. And it touches upon many varied themes, including, but not limited to, life in Palestine under the British Mandate, dealing with death and dying, overcoming fear, the choices we make in life, regret, success, friendship, love and discovering where we were supposed to be all along. No doubt, his mystery novel will be even more of a page-turner and complex in a different way. The basis for it is certainly intriguing.
It “is about a lusty and lively paraplegic lady licensed private investigator centred in New York City,” explained Wassermann. “As unlikely as this may seem, it is based on a real paraplegic lady in the Vancouver area who, while not a PI, was as lusty and lively and totally self-disclosing as the character who she inspired. However, the only Jewish thing about this book is its author.”
For those for whom the Jewish aspect matters – and for those who just want a good read – Measuring Up is available at amazon.com and other online booksellers.
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