Tsipi Keller has taken us into a writer's very being. It is hard work and all-consuming ... This is a provocative story that stays with the reader.— Jewish Book Council
"It is beyond difficult to write fiction about a fiction-maker; not only do you have to get into the guy's head, you've got to create a plot in which something actually happens. Keller does both, and in a way that's unnerving-how does she know so much about what it means to be a man, trapped in his head, convinced he will find and reveal the essential truths of life?"— Head Butler
"Poet and novelist Keller (Retelling) handles this poignant tale with the deftness of a writer who has struggled alongside her characters."— Publishers Weekly
"In this haunting novel, Marcus Weiss is trapped in the legacy of the Holocaust and the presence of anti-Semitism. Writing a novel, and compiling a dictionary, he seeks to capture the totality of experience. The silences of the book, and Marcus's own collections of quotations, are eloquent and memorable."— Lew Fried, Kent State University
"In elegant, pitch-perfect prose, Tsipi Keller explores what it means to be a writer in a post-Holocaust world. Her evocation of Marcus Weiss-at once tender and wise-lays bare the felt life of the novelist. Along the way, Keller pays honor to the human experience and to the artful language that gives us our measure."— Andrew Furman, author of Israel Through the Jewish-American Imagination: A Survey of Jewish-American Literature on Israel, 1928-1995
"Marcus Weiss preaches the love of literature in a wilderness where people don't read. Moreover, he is a writer. He is writing a book about himself writing, and about his lover and his friends, who wonder if they'll appear in his book. He exhorts them to read books that matter, that make us more human, that make the mind dance. And the marvelous thing is that the book he is writing, which is the one we are reading, is just such a book, because Marcus is generous, opinionated, foolish, and inspired, not merely a creature of words and paper. I'm sure he would add Tsipi Keller to his list of favorite authors if he knew her."— Joel Agee, author of Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany
Praise for the Hebrew Edition
"The Prophet of Tenth Street could serve as a basis for a Woody Allen movie: introspective characters, a New York arena, Jews and gentiles, occasional quotes of selected excerpts from the literary canon ... Many readers will identify with Keller's characters."— Yaakov Yoseph, Yedioth Ahronot
"Marcus Weiss, the protagonist of The Prophet of Tenth Street, is a man obsessed with books, and 'his' authors. His girlfriend, Gina, constantly tries to bring him down to earth and show him what real life is all about ... His interior world is rich, and his literary knowledge and respect for the written word are admirable ... One enjoys the richness of Keller's language, her descriptive powers, and the complex shaping of her characters."— Osnat Blayer, Ma'ariv
"Keller's cinematographic descriptions bring to mind Bergman, Antonioni, and even Andy Warhol ... Marcus Weiss is an intellectual, with an acute self-awareness ... Marcus longs for a simple, primal human contact ... His girlfriend, Gina, radiating her femininity, her libido, attempts to get him to live the everyday, the here and now in Manhattan, the most exciting and stimulating cultural center of the modern age ... I think, therefore I am, seems to be his motto."— Reuven Miran, Haaretz"
Marcus Weiss is a middle-aged Jewish writer living in New York City, working on a novel called The Reverse Turn of the Heart, as well as a literary reference book—the Dictionary of the Human Gesture in Western Literature. His girlfriend Gina and best friend Oscar have nicknamed him "The Prophet of Tenth Street," "because he can't bear the idea that others… are not exactly like him." Marcus is neurotic like a Woody Allen character without the buoyant humor, obsessing over his literary pursuits, religion, women, love, and death. He produces his notebooks to quote Hitler and Maimonides for visitors, while Gina talks about him like he isn't in the room—"He's gracious, too," she says, "wants nothing better than the well-being of his guests... He tries to memorize their every word, every muscle twitch." Marcus's musings will be familiar to any struggling author, as when he considers, "What happens to my characters when I take a break?" One day, Marcus discovers that an old man has entered his book, but can't recall how he got there, or who he is. In an intriguing conflation of the writer and the text, readers are left to parse out whether the old man is a projection of a future version of Marcus, or a contemporaneous Marcus attempting to reinsert himself into the story of his younger self. Poet and novelist Keller (Retelling) handles this poignant tale with the deftness of a writer who has struggled alongside her characters. (Mar.)
