Word: lukshin
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Dates: during 1961-1961
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...student Twirckoff, Yom Kippur was always a day of dread." Thus begins Mark Mirsky's short story, "Lukshin Kugel" (in English that's noodle pudding). Twirckoff's dread--What does it mean to be a Jew?--sets the tone for this second issue of Mosaic, a literary magazine published by the Hillel Society...
Mirsky's story, a humorous parody of the recent space of identity crisis fiction, unfortunately is marred by most of the major flaws of recent American Jewish fiction--not to mention a few offenses that are uniquely Mirsky's. "Lukshin Kugel" is sloppily sentimental, affecting an uncritical nostalgia for the ghetto, and is narrated in a shoulder-shrugging Yiddish tone that is not maintained consistently. In one moment, the narrator sounds like a much-oppressed peasant from the Russian Pale ("Myself, I say, you never know when a pogrom is going to come along. One minute you're in Minsk...
...Yiddish words; his extraordinary stress on Jewish self-abasement, passivity, and lamentation in Twirckoff's response to crisis; his condescending attitude toward his protagonist; and the intrusion of a phony mystical hallucination at the end to get Twirckoff off the spiritual hook--all of these flaws keep "Lukshin Kugel" from creating any unified effect...
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