A World To Come Comes To Novel Idea

A true-life crime led author Dara Horn to begin writing “The World to Come,” the choice for this year’s A Novel Idea … Read Together, the Deschutes Public Library System’s annual community reading event.

Events kick off today with a performance of excerpts from “Fiddler on the Roof” from the Obsidian Opera Company’s 2007 production of the musical, set in Russia during the pogroms, a prolonged persecution of Russian Jews that began in the 1880s.

Novel-Prize For the next 2? weeks, the Deschutes Public Library System will host a range of programs, including book discussions, art workshops and film screenings, at county libraries, local bookstores and other venues (see accompanying schedule).

The catalyst for “The World to Come” was the June 2001 theft of a Marc Chagall painting during a singles’ cocktail mixer at a New York museum, Horn told The Bulletin on Tuesday by phone from her home in New York.

Soon after the still-unsolved crime, Horn began writing the book, her second novel.

“I read about this theft, and it was just fascinating to me,” Horn said. “I thought, ‘What kind of person walks into a singles’ mixer and walks out with a million-dollar painting?’”

A number of themes are explored in what is largely the story of the Ziskind family, including Benjamin, a former child prodigy who absconds with a Chagall painting from a museum. He’s convinced it once hung in his childhood home.

Time magazine called the novel “a deeply satisfying literary mystery,” one that explores the longevity of art, issues of plagiarism, Russian literature and Jewish mysticism.

Though a real incident inspired Horn’s novel, it is a work of fiction. However, she does weave into her work two historical figures, painter Chagall and Yiddish writer Der Nister. “The World to Come” is set, in part, in a Jewish boys’ colony where Chagall and Der Nister once worked together.

Horn told The Bulletin that one interviewer repeatedly asked her what she has against Chagall, who comes off as ambitious and cunning compared with the soulful, tortured writer Der Nister.

“Which is probably quite unfair” to Chagall, says Horn, who has no problem with self-promoting artists. “When the book was coming out, (Chagall’s granddaughter) called my publisher and wanted a copy of the book before it had been released. I was horrified when I heard this, because I thought, ‘Here comes the lawsuit.’

“But actually, she really liked the book and felt it was a beautiful tribute to her grandfather. That was very gratifying for me to hear.”

On the other hand, at a recent speaking engagement in Los Angeles, a woman told Horn that her friend had known Der Nister, and believed that Horn had gotten his personality wrong.

“I guess one thing I could have done is I could have tried to track these people down before I wrote the book,” Horn said. “But I think that’s a paralyzing thing to do if you’re writing fiction, because then you’re really limited if you feel beholden to these people.”

She added, “When I started writing this book, I set up this pairing between these two artists and was looking at what (it is) about art that makes it last.

“Usually, we talk about the ‘merit’ of a work of art,” she said. “I think there’s a belief that most people have, that what makes a work of art survive is its quality. History will pass judgment, and even if something is faddish and popular now, in the distant future there will be some sort of higher committee of culture that will somehow seep down, and we’ll all conclude this piece of work is a masterpiece, and this piece of work is not worth our time.”

Horn wanted to explore the possibility that that may not be true, that some worthy art may go forgotten anyway, such as the works of Der Nister and other Yiddish writers. Hence her feeling that Chagall, whose fame is ongoing, “doesn’t need my help. Der Nister does.”

Horn was also interested in looking at the differences between literature and painting.

“Painting and visual arts don’t need to be translated, and literature always needs to be translated,” she says. “That was the case of Yiddish literature, almost every Yiddish writer in history could have been written in another language.”

Claudia Hinz

Bend resident Claudia Hinz, who earned a bachelor’s degree in English and literature from Harvard and a master’s from Southern Methodist University, will lead two Novel Idea discussions: The first will take place Friday at Between the Covers bookstore, the second May 13 at the Jewish Community of Central Oregon Synagogue.

Hinz completed her second read of “The World to Come” on Wednesday evening, she said.

“Different things come to light on the second read. I’m sure on a third read I’d be drawn to different areas,” she said.

“There are so many compelling aspects of this book, which make it a fun read. On the surface, there’s the theft of this masterpiece, this small Chagall painting, and then the issue of was it plagiarized, is it a fake?”

Hinz said the most thought-provoking aspect for her is the “World to Come” of the title, “the life that awaits us after this one, and where we come from. (Horn) uses the phrase ‘The World to Come’ to refer both to where we come from and where we’re going, but also the possibilities that exist for us in this life.”

Hinz feels the book makes the reader think about “where we come from, where we’re going, and how decisions we make on Earth affect different things.”

Horn has received plenty of feedback about the book’s — Novel-Prize in her opinion — ambiguous ending. Without giving too much away for those still reading the book, we’ll say that a major character attempts a rescue in a damaged building only to enter “the world to come.”

“If the reader has in mind a way that he or she either would like or expects it to end, he or she sees that ending and does not notice the ambiguity,” she says. “I once did two interviews closer to when the book came out, and the first interviewer’s question was something like, ‘When I got to the end, I was so happy … do you always write books with happy endings?’

“The following day, someone else interviewed me for something different. That person said, ‘It’s very rare for an American writer to write such a dark ending. Was it your intention to write this dire, unredemptive ending to the book?’”

“People don’t feel the ending is ambiguous,” Horn said Novel-Prize. “People feel that it ended in a particular way. To me, that’s very exciting.

“It showed what I intended to show in making an ambiguous ending. The reader’s the one who really finishes the book.”

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