[CPProt.net] Book review: Art theft leads to intriguing stories

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Art theft leads to intriguing stories
Review by SUSAN HALL-BALDUF


December 18, 2005

'The World to Come'  

Norton, 514 pages, $24.95
 
In 2001, a small painting by Russian-born surrealistic Marc Chagall was
stolen from the Jewish Museum in New York during a singles party. It turned
up later, no explanation, in Topeka, Kan., of all places.

Novelist Dara Horn has taken this event as inspiration for "The World to
Come," bringing to life a fictional thief, his family and the painting,
"Study for 'Over Vitebsk.' "

The thief is Benjamin Ziskind, a professional nerd: He writes questions for
a TV quiz show. When he was a child, he had his own quiz show, "Beat the
Wizkind."

Being a professional smarty-pants has never been a social asset.

He was further set off from his peers while growing up because he had to
wear a brace to straighten his back and because his father died young.

Now he feels cut off from the world: His mother just died and he can't get
over his humiliating divorce. When his twin sister, Sara, bullies him into
attending a singles event at the Museum of Hebraic Art, he is attracted not
to potential dates but to a painting, a small, dark work he knows well. It
used to hang over the couch in his parents' apartment.

So he steals it.

Horn abruptly switches the story to 1920s Russia, where a shell-shocked
Jewish orphan receives a painting from his art teacher, Comrade Chagall. The
gift is witnessed by Chagall's friend Der Nister -- the Hidden One -- whose
stories would have made an interesting counterpart to Chagall's artwork if
Der Nister had ever been able to leave Soviet Russia.

His tales, which Horn re-creates from the writer's real-life stories, are so
fantastical, they steal all the scenes where she inserts them.

It's disappointing overall when the novel returns to Ben. He's so numb, even
when he's busted by the Chagall exhibit's charming curator, that it's hard
to feel anything for him -- really, he's no more than a device to get the
story going.

But, oh, what a story, or collection of stories. Even the account of Ben's
father, Daniel, losing his leg in Vietnam has a richness of detail not
expected from a war where it seems every possible grenade has already been
exploded.

Most of all, "The World to Come" is a celebration of Jewish culture, a
lament for what has been lost and an invitation to seek out what remains.

SUSAN HALL-BALDUF is a Free Press copy editor.

http://www.freep.com/