Another Potok fan revisited: I see that David over at Fearfully Human just posted an article about his recent reading of Chaim Potok's The Promise. I've mentioined Fearfully Human elsewhere in regard to Potok's work. Here is a brief quote from this latest post.

"What draws me to his books like a hungry soul is something I have found in no other writer with the depth and beauty and honesty of Potok's writing - a look at the conflict between old faith and new faith. Faith and Reason, Faith and Art, Tradition and Innovation. He seemed never to be afraid of the darkness, the ugliness, the absence of God. And he trudges through these darknesses, leads us through them with a rare nobility, to a place where our discontent, our faithlessness, our doubts and hurts and angers can be given a face, called by name, and allowed to reconcile with our expectations of what life, and God, ought to be like. He gives me hope that there is place for balance in the tension, and not only balance but beauty and humility and the virtues that seem so despairingly short in our world."

When it comes to Potok's novels, I sense David and I are kindred spirits. I did recieve The Gift of Asher Lev for Christmas, and have since read it. It is as compelling as the other Potok books I've read. My feeling is that Chaim Potok wrote the Asher Lev novels in the same way he had Asher Lev paint. I don't know if that makes sense, but perhaps those of you who have read the Asher Lev novels understand what I'm trying to say, and can articulate the thought in a better way...

Peace, ~ The Billy Goat ~