Carol Bergman

They tried to understand what had happened. It had happened fast, they’d been drinking—what else does one do at a bar (while socializing of course)—and talking about the descriptions of various wines on the chalk board. Someone had a good handwriting they noticed; it looked like calligraphy. Different colored chalks plus a drawing of a wine glass. Pretty damn good.

There were three of them, all men, hanging out after work. Where else was there to go? They had nothing much to talk about except their work and the descriptions of the wine and where they were going on their next vacation and their electronic devices. All three cell phones were on the bar, silenced, but lighting up now and again and demanding their attention—a tweet or a text.

A couple slid in next to them, a man and a woman, the woman much younger than the man and pretty, the man balding and overweight. The three friends began to whisper and giggle like a bunch of schoolgirls. And the balding man noticed and said, “Hey, what are you looking at?” The way he slurred his words, it was obvious he’d had a head start at another bar somewhere. But this didn’t stop the three friends from hooting and howling and making lewd remarks to the woman. “That your daughter?” one of them asked.

Within seconds, fists were flying and the older balding guy was on the floor. Not suprisingly, everyone had a different story to tell the cops depending on whose side they were on—the three young guys or the balding older guy and his pretty young date—and where they were sitting at the bar. The bartender had a story, so did the manager. Who could tell the story straight? Who knew what had really happened?

I watched it all unfold, as a reporter. And I thought to myself that it was up to me to get the story straight—to interview everyone, gather all the details, and write it from a reporter’s point of view, like a detective. I wasn’t part of the action, I wasn’t at the bar; I was at a table. I had an obligation. Small story and I am writing it here. My observations, my point of view.

I’d just come from a screening—a story about two sisters, concert musicians, who lived together like a married couple all their lives. Their symbiosis was eccentric and troubling, but never discussed. How did they become this way? There was very little narration—the reporter was mostly absent—cinema verité.

Diane Arbus intruded on her subjects in a similar way. Her photos are compelling, but they are also freak shows.  Read More 

Art restitution was still on my mind. I’d published “Egon Schiele, My Father and Me” in The Jewish Forward on February 11th about the restitution of one of my father’s Schiele paintings. The response had been interesting. Some readers were concerned that any Jewish misdeeds would once again and forever stir anti-Semitism. Some tried to disprove it—it never happened. How could Jews—Holocaust survivors no less—deliberately, or unwittingly, buy and sell looted art?

The doubters/deniers offered me documents. Would I like to see them to prove innocence of malfeasance? Others congratulated me on the brave article I had written. Though I do not consider myself brave, I do know that—thanks to my parents, their education, their early lives in a cultured pre-Nazi Vienna—my moral compass is strong. I stand by what I wrote in the article.

And now we have the film, “Woman in Gold,” with Helen Mirren playing Maria Altman, niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the subject of the painting by Gustav Klimt hanging in the Neue Galerie in New York. This gorgeous, valuable painting was restituted after many years of legal action by E. Randol (Randy) Schoenberg against Austria, and then bought by Ronald Lauder for his gallery. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, has bought other restituted paintings, a great gift to the families after so many years of heartache and struggle.

I am what the Germans call a “zweiter,” a Second Generation. According to Helen Epstein in her seminal work, “Children of the Holocaust,” it is my generation that does the “emotion-work,” which often means that we pay attention to issues as they arise and feel obligated to speak out about them. Our parents—the survivors—were too busy escaping and then surviving—beginning again, trying to be happy, and raising their children as best they could despite the distortions of their agonizing trauma. There have been other genocides in history—many are still going on today—and I worry that we are becoming numb to them. As a writer and a child of the Jewish Holocaust, I feel that it is my mandate to remain alert to these new atrocities and, more immediately at home, to discrimination and the protection of American freedoms. Indeed, I am very pleased to be an American.

In a line at the end of “Woman in Gold,” Altman says that she had thought the restitution of the painting would make her feel better; it didn’t. And why not? Because she had left her parents behind.

I had already been crying, but this scene took me over the edge. In my efforts to understand my mother’s pain, I had always fixated on her mother—my grandmother, Nanette, who was killed in Auschwitz—and had written about her often in memoir and fiction. I had imagined my mother’s farewell scene with her parents before her escape with my father and his siblings. The exactitude of the script startled me, as did Mirren’s performance which so perfectly embodied the elegant, dignified, undefeated hauteur of the Viennese refugees I had grown up with. The film is a tribute to them and I loved it.  Read More 

1. “My Life in Middlemarch” by Rebecca Mead. Mead is a reporter for The New Yorker, born in England in a small provincial town much like Middlemarch, and she came to my rescue as I was trying to read the novel for the umpteenth time, and failing abysmally. Perhaps if I read Mead’s book, I thought to myself, I might enter this challenging novel at last and inform my niece that I have done so. She belongs to a “classics” book club and is well ahead of me with that list.

Mead’s book is part memoir, part literary analysis, part bio of George Eliot. It’s well written and interesting, but whether I’ll finally be able to read “Middlemarch” itself, I do not know right now. Or, perhaps, I could cheat and say I have read “Middlemarch” because I have learned so much about it from Rebecca Mead. Not likely.

2. “The Bostonians,” by Henry James. Having failed with “Middlemarch,” I turned to another 19th century tome with greater success. This surprised me; I have never been able to read Henry James even though my husband was named after him by his journalist father. (We call my Henry James Jim for short. The 19th century Henry would not have approved.) Well, this is not exactly accurate. I did read “Portrait of a Lady” in college. I can’t remember a word. So how did it happen that I should attempt another Henry James? Well, I was upstate at my daughter’s house where I keep a small library of books and needed something to read slowly—slow reading I call it—before going to sleep (the e-books are too speedy at bedtime) and there was “The Bostonians” on the shelf. Fortunately I wasn’t too tired to get the cadence of James’ long sentences that first night and, before long, I was swept up in the story of New England suffragettes and, more importantly, sequestered homosexuality. Henry James was gay. This I learned from studying Edith Wharton and John Singer Sargent. And the book is loaded with allusions, attractions, rapture, commitment, jealousy—all woman to woman for safety sake. Please forgive me, dear reader, but I see Henry James and his struggles in his protagonists Olive and Verena. What an odd couple!

3. “A Son at the Front” by Edith Wharton. Published in 1922 and dedicated to two friends she lost in WW I, Wharton describes in scintillating descriptive detail what it was like in Paris during the war. She had been living in Paris, was already a successful author, and became a war correspondent for two magazines, traveled to the front, and was active in relief efforts for wounded soldiers and their families.

This is a reread for me as Wharton’s stories and sentences never disappoint me. I didn’t start reading her work until about ten years ago and I go back to them time and again for inspiration, psychological insight and entertainment. I had wanted to read this one last year—the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WW I—but was too busy with other things.

We are still a nation at war and probably will be for some time. Soldiers returning from Afghanistan, their families, all of us. This book resonates.

4. “Netherland” by Joseph O’Neill. Such an interesting writer—half Turkish, half Irish, raised in Holland. This is his first novel gifted to me by a friend just yesterday. I started reading it on my long train ride home and was riveted from the first paragraph. It’s a 30-something story and I am no longer 30-something (no one is for very long) and so I find some of it boring and predictable and I am not that interested in cricket, I am interested in this writer and how he is making this story. I don’t know if I’ll finish it or not, but I’m pleased to have been introduced to him. His new book is called “Dog,” set in Dubai (now that is interesting), and he’s also written a memoir, “Blood-Dark Track,” which is definitely on my list because I am so interested in O’Neill as a writer.

That’s it for today dear reader. Would you add your current reading escapades here, please, not just titles, but annotations—how you found your way to the book and why it resonates, or doesn’t? Many thanks.  Read More 

We could have been in Rome or Paris or Berlin, walking in the gardens, gardens with statues and fountains. It might have been spring, the air moist with blossom and seed. Perhaps a light rain had been falling all morning and I was sauntering under my cheerful turquoise umbrella. But we weren’t in Rome or Paris or Berlin, we were on the line at Fairway, in the organic section upstairs. He was behind me, humming. I turned around and said, “You are singing.” And he said, “One must not stop singing.”

I was carrying a few groceries but he had a cart filled to overflowing. The top layer was chard escaping from a plastic bag, the large leaves with their red veins drooping over and nearly falling out of the cart. I began to laugh and said, “I see you have bought some vegetables.” And he said, “One must not stop eating vegetables.”

And as he talked, it was as though he was singing. I asked if he was a singer. “A baritone,” he said.

He was tall and slim, wearing a black wool jacket. And though his hair was dyed black with gray showing at the roots, he was ageless, like other angels I have met in the city. He was a troubadour who enjoyed singing and telling stories, descendant of the medieval troubadours from France and Spain.

It was a long line, everyone home from work on line at Fairway, it seemed. We had time to talk. I told him about two other troubadours I had met recently: Gary who played his guitar on a milk crate in the Overlook Passage in my Washington Heights neighborhood and sang “Let it Be” and nothing else. (I wrote about him here on November 1, 2014.) He had disappeared. “If only he were traveling,” I said. “But I fear he has sickened and died during our harsh winter.” And Scott, who played the flute in the same passage, taking turns with Gary who only played in the mornings. Scott was still there; he didn’t know what had happened to Gary. Both Scott and Gary were gifted in their own way, both of them homeless. Gary had never admitted he was homeless, but Scott had confirmed that he was.

“I have been fortunate. I had a privileged childhood and now I work at the Metropolitan Opera,” my new friend said. I never learned his name. There wasn’t enough time for that.  Read More 

“Egon Schiele, My Father and Me” was published in New York on February 11th and will appear in London this week, or next, in a full page spread with a photo and illustration. I could not be more pleased. This is a story “with legs,” as we say, of interest to many and an important contribution to the historical record. It is my hope that it will continue to travel far and wide. I have retained all rights.

It’s always gratifying to have an article, essay or book accepted for publication especially if one is paid well and/or the subject is deserving of attention. Gathering material for a story, writing it, working it, submitting, and then collaborating with a good editor—the arduous process is rewarded with a sale. But it’s not the only reward. People respond to the work with commentary online or letters to the editor, or they contact the writer with a personal anecdote, a question, a criticism, or a correction. My preference is to answer everything I receive in a timely manner with courtesy and attention—even the critical comments. After all, I have sent my writing out into the public sphere and this implies an obligation to those who read it.

In the case of the Egon Schiele piece, which explores the oddity of my father’s art collection among other things, the response has been both heartwarming and critical. I have been invited for drinks, invited to peruse documents that might change my mind, and I have discovered cousins I never knew existed. Quite a ride.

Once in London, after writing a controversial article for The Times Educational Supplement about racism in the British school system, I was asked to testify in the House of Lords. I had been invited by a Lord who liked the article and wanted to use it in defense of new proposed legislation. In the midst of a hot debate during which I remained silent, another Lord got up and suggested I return to the United States where I belonged. Of course, he was extremely polite and called me Mrs. Bergman. I was very young and inexperienced . The flattery of the invitation had trumped my journalistic scepticism and I felt stung. It took me a while to understand that I’d done nothing wrong. The article had legs.

http://forward.com/articles/214605/egon-schiele-my-father-and-me/?p=all


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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

These are not just words. They are a living thing, a call to action, a roadmap for citizenship and an insistence in the capacity of free men and women to shape our own destiny.

--President Barack Obama in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 2015.

We didn't know what to expect when we arrived at the Court House in Kingston, NY last Friday morning. As we were leaving, my British-born son-in-law, Ryan, quipped wryly that he might be alone in the court room. His citizenship test and interview had taken place in Lower Manhattan which was teeming with people, but this was Kingston, a small, historic town in Ulster County. The town dates back to the 17th century Dutch period and there are many stone houses in the “stockade,” as it is called, in the old part of town. It was the perfect location to become a hyphenated Anglo-American or an American of British ancestry; the choice is always ours.

The ceremony took place in the Supreme Court of the State of NY, Hon. Mary M. Work presiding. And there were many surprises. First, the judge was a woman, an older woman—brava to that—and the Clerk of the Court, Nina Postupack, redundant to say, was also a woman, a younger woman. Brava to that, too.

Secondly, the court room was crowded: 46 soon-to- be New Americans from 30 countries, friends and family, filled the hard wooden seats. A woman handed out brochures for ESL classes and a Daughter of the American Revolution distributed American flag lapel pins. Just think about that, I thought, how that venerable elitist organization has had to change.

But, most surprising, were the thoughtful narratives from elected officials and the Judge. The most touching: Legislator Craig V. Lopez told the story of his Puerto Rican family, a hardscrabble childhood, and what it means to him to be an American. Then a local high school choir sang the National Anthem and God Bless America and the New Americans took an oath of allegiance which sounded dated, but also profound.

The next day President Obama addressed a crowd in Selma, his eloquent and elegant speech the perfect addendum to the citizenship ceremony, a reminder of how this country was formed and how much work we still have to do. The President is a good storyteller and a good writer, as were our well-educated, well-read Founding Fathers.  Read More 

They have identified the monster who has been beheading men in the dessert. In these horrific videos, the men are wearing orange jump suits and the killer is dressed in black, sleek monster fashion to be admired/emulated by all his FB friends around the world.

Let us not give this criminal/terrorist a name or wonder with endless interviews what he was like as a boy, how he turned from the sweetest child into a monster. He and others like him must be stopped, as Hitler had to be stopped. Are these killings any less planned? Any less awful?

And I could go on, but have promised myself to take a break from the news—print and electronic—from the images of beheadings and all the geopolitics associated with them.

Is it possible for a writer to ignore what is going on in the world? Or for any artist? Can we create a work so insulated that it glows serenely in a utopian, cosmic firmament? How did Murdoch manage “By the Sea, By the Sea,” for example. Or Naipaul, how did he explain to himself “The Enigma of Arrival?” These are books of descriptive pastoral contentment and they are utterly relaxing. Perhaps these writers took a respite from beheadings, metaphorically speaking. We all need that. Is it any wonder that the renaissance in cable/tv programs keeps us glued week after binging week? What are your favorites, dear reader?

In a PBS documentary I watched last night, Philip Roth, a dark comic writer who claims he has permanently retired from writing said, “You don’t have to look for suffering when you’re a writer. It will find you soon enough.”

Indeed.

And so I am ignoring the pressing concerns of the world today, or just for today. I turned off my computer before noon, I went for a swim, I met a friend for lunch, I bought some bananas, I washed the dishes. And I will turn on the television after I sign-off here to watch a favorite program or two. House of Cards, Season 3, Episode 1. I'll start with that.  Read More 

I was walking in the light snow late this morning when I spotted a FDNY Communications truck. What kind of communications?, I wondered. I had never seen a truck like this before. I put down my groceries and waited. There was a story here, that was obvious, and I am forever in search of a good story.

A handsome young man with Fire Department logos on his shirt and hat emerged from the truck with a sack of tools which he placed at the base of what I now know is an Emergency Rescue Service box, or ERS Box for short. The cover on the base of this nearly one-hundred year old structure was open to fresh new wiring that needed some fixing. Rather than scuttle the solid housing, they have been refurbished and rewired. History preserved. All of them are now hooked up to a central computer, and when one falters, the repair trucks are sent out pronto. They are now an important tool in the city’s emergency preparedness; if cell phones and the internet go down, these boxes will still work. There are more than 5,000 in all five boroughs of the city. Breathe a sigh.

Of course, I was as interested to hear all this as Edward, the technician, was to tell me about it. He was an articulate and voluble story teller, as are most ordinary people. According to Stephen Pinker in his book, “The Language Instinct,” we are hard-wired to speak, and by extension, we are hard-wired to tell stories. Electronic media short-circuits this hard-wiring with sound byte communication which is not good for writers. But a return to long form oral storytelling is good for writers. And though Edward had his cell phone on one ear as we were talking—his supervisor I hoped, not his girlfriend—we were conversing in long, narrative sentences about the Mayor’s recent snow-storm shut-down of the city, the perfect opportunity to test all the emergency services, including the ERS boxes. “We need to do this,” Edward said. “New Yorkers are always complaining, but they shouldn’t complain. Just last week, a woman was attacked, she pressed the fire button—there is also a police button—and the fire truck arrived in minutes. The attacker fled. I’ve been thinking about her. She was almost raped. This work I do, it’s important.”

Edward, thank you. This blog post is dedicated to you and all the other emergency service workers and first responders everywhere.  Read More 

I was eager to meet my new students. I never know who will turn up, it is always an interesting surprise, but when I arrived at the building, I realized it was not the best building to be teaching my class; it was not accessible. And sure enough, Valerie Pepe, was waiting for me in the lobby and she was understandably incensed. She had been dropped off from work by Access-a-Ride which she has to book well in advance, they were scheduled to pick her up at 9 p.m., and until then, she wasn’t going anywhere. She had three choices: quit (never an option for Valerie), register for another section of the class in a different—accessible—building, or find some way to get upstairs, a lot of them. And, of course, this was not her responsibility, it was the university’s responsibility. They—the powers that be—are mandated by law to make such an egregious error right, immediately.

So there was I and there was Valerie, incensed but insistent on taking my class, and this wasn’t flattery, she had heard about me and wanted to experience my class, she said. So I began a discussion with the security guard and the other building staff on duty and we decided, all of us, that we’d get Valerie upstairs even if she had to be carried. More students arrived and every one, to a person, also offered to help.

I need to explain here that Valerie has a congenital orthopedic deformity called Athrogryposis Multiplex Congenita (AMC). She has had numerous surgeries and is on crutches. In addition to having a disability, she has a Masters Degree in Social Work, a full-time job with the city, more than one thousand FB friends, a polished fashion sense, an engaging sense of humor, boyfriends now that she is no longer married, a fund-raising organization for research into this deformity which also provides support to afflicted families (http://amcmusicfestival.com/valerie-pepe/), tireless energy, and great ambition to write a memoir about her life thus far. Does any one who knows her have any doubt that she will do this? No.

During the siege that we now call 9/11, Valerie’s co-workers trundled her down the stairs and up Sixth Avenue away from the falling debris and incinerated bodies. They made it as far as 18th Street where they stopped for respite at the Hollywood Diner which forever after has become one of Valerie’s writing rooms. They let her sit as long as she likes, she can order food or not, though she usually is starving after work. And I meet her there from time to time to discuss her pages. Our relationship as mentor and student is ongoing, for which I am most grateful.

The challenge of a disability, even a mental affliction, can be a powerful motivational force. I have seen it time and time again and it is always inspiring to me and to the other students in the class. Do most of us have such obstacles? We do not. If Valerie can make it to class and work on her writing day in and day out, why shouldn’t we?  Read More 

Sometimes a name fits a person and Bella is most definitely a Bella, inside and out. I first met her in the elevator of our building—we live on the same floor—as she was returning from a rendezvous with her Russian women friends in Bennett Park. She said she was feeling bored with these women friends, she liked men, and all the women talked about was their aches and pains and grandchildren. Bella has two sons, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren, and she adores them all, but she is also an artist and she likes talking about art and how she makes art. Did I mention she is 91, has had six eye operations, injections in her hip, and so on, the usual old-age complaints. She doesn’t lament, she gets back to work. Four days a week, she has an attendant, and she is fortunate to have the money to hire someone to help her, but it is the three days a week she is on her own—widowed but not bereft—that she feels most happy and free. Why? She is still making art.

“Aren’t we lucky,” she said, when I began to talk about being a writer and writing every day no matter what else is going on in my life. Aren’t we lucky, indeed.

One day, I met Bella in front of the building. It was cold, but she was outside getting some fresh air. She was wearing a knitted Russian hat and sitting on her walker reading a book—a Russian detective mystery. “I usually read literature,” she said in her heavily accented English. “So when are you coming to see my gallery?” she asked.

I hadn’t yet been to her apartment. Now it was time. “Come over after dinner. I eat at 6.”

And so I went.

In her apartment, Bella uses two canes to get around, and she is in pain. But the enthusiasm of showing me her work, her husband’s work, the work of friends—cameos, oils, watercolors—trumped discomfort. Every canvas had a story—about the artist and the subject. And the apartment gallery was immaculate, every inch curated by Bella. But it was her work that was most impressive; she’s a miniaturist. Trained as a costume and fashion designer, she began painting miniatures around 1970 when she was still living in Russia. She sold many; others are in museums. Now she gives them away. And she has fun: a series of opera stars in costume, another of French and British royalty, movie stars, whatever occurs to her. Her collection of brushes is scattered in thick jars all over the apartment and she has two desks where she works with her still smooth-skinned only slightly arthritic hands.
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