Stirring up the skeletons

In presenting what is ostensibly the story of his family—and turns out to be so much more—the local author has gleefully tossed out any and all literary inhibitions and produced a lyrical hodgepodge that can best be described as a biographical collage filled with a kitchen sinkful of ideas and images that is sure to delight as many readers as it confounds.

From his descriptive opening scene in a Nazi concentration camp, Schachter leads a journey of discovery that meanders here and there through the years, illustrated at every turn by a steady barrage of images that includes not only nostalgic black-and-white or sepia-toned photographs raided from family albums but also hand-written letters, postcards, drawings, newspaper clippings and stills from Hollywood films. In what amounts to a copyright lawyer’s bonanza, Schachter pilfers, borrows and otherwise appropriates images from popular culture to help illustrate his story—including frames from Disney’s ‘Dumbo’ and that famous lump-in-the-throat final scene between Charles Chaplin and Virginia Cherrill in ‘City Lights’—and yes, they not only work very well but add a key emotional dimension to the story.

Attempting to describe Skandalon and its style is deceptively difficult, for there seem to be much fewer adjectives that don’t describe it. From one page to another it is amusing, disturbing, eloquent and insane—in short, a very human account of a very human family.

“My book opens on ‘the madness of my family that mirrors the madness of the world,’ and closes on ‘those family lies and normative notions that would never survive the talking activity in which Jesus engaged us,’� says Schachter. “Along the way, I record an eye-witness account of both Kristalnacht and the victory of the Momzers over the Koshers on Fletcher’s Field, my return to Bordeaux Prison, where no member of the Schachter family had lodged for 50 years, and a young Jewish girl’s refuge in the enemy territory of wartime Montreal.�

Schachter’s style works—in its own peculiar way—and as the multi-faceted narrative unfolds, content and form become inseparable to the point where, halfway through the book, telling the story any other way would seem uncomfortable.

The family’s long-kept secrets are brought out in words and images as Schachter delves into the past with the curiosity of an investigative reporter and the keen sense of a historian, regardless of any unpleasant skeletons he might disturb. "I answer the nagging question of my aunt's suicide, my father's legitimacy and the whole kit and caboodle that almost all families keep locked in the closet," he claims with an air of well-earned pride.

Skandalon deserves its place among the more eccentric works of creative non-fiction and should not remain relegated to the consignment shelf of local bookshops simply because the average reader/consumer might not make head nor tail of it. Given the chance, they probably would.



Published in a limited edition, Skandalon by Eric Schachter is available at the Nicholas Hoare book store on Greene Avenue.