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In Conversation: Evan Solomon - Page 2© Paula E. Kirman
The other sense of love in the story is that when you love somebody you have to engage in it and take action. If someone was attacking someone you love you ought to run in and engage and take action. The whole book is about that notion of engagement in the sense of television always urging us to take action. Love is a form of empathy -- how much do we love our fellow human beings that we ought to stop the conflict in Kosovo; how much do we love our fellow human beings that we ought to send money somewhere-- or how much do we don't. Jake is trying to negotiate that position of being the witness or the voyeur versus someone who can actually make a real connection of love, to cross that distance and take action, which he finally does.
Evan: Yes; I am not talking about so much the religious side of being Jewish. Judaism resonated with me after a long search because of its notion of storytelling, of being a people of the book. The act of passage into adulthood is an act of literacy. That's an interesting survival mechanism Jews have had over the centuries. Jews have survived in the Diaspora because we've democratized storytelling. The Temple was destroyed and the priestly class who were the keepers of the story in the inner sanctum of the temple were wiped out and they invented the rabbi, which means teacher. This was thousands of years ago that we democratized learning and it allowed the stories to be written down not in oral culture, but written culture. So storytelling is really crucial, and you have to know your own story. When I was writing this book I was aware that I like everyone else around me, we survive in the Judeo-Christian culture with myths and rituals that underpin everything we do and that's really a part of who I am. One of the things this book is about is Jake, who is an intelligent person and his brother who is a physical person -- Cain, the physical person, Abel, the intelligent person. Jacob, the clever, intelligent person. Esau, the warrior. Intelligence in the Bible is always part and parcel with knowledge of good and evil and craftiness; it's always a compromise. I am aware of those things in the book, so it was an influence because I think all stories do resonate and I was thinking definitely about Jacob and Esau, Jacob wrestling with an angel, wrestling with our conscience to take action. The angel, of course is always like a Döppelganger, a shadow figure in the bible, almost your conscience. Jake sees himself on TV and he has to wrestle with his own image all the time, which is very similar.
The copyright of the article In Conversation: Evan Solomon - Page 2 in Canadian Literature is owned by Darren Anderson. Permission to republish In Conversation: Evan Solomon - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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