Fiction Than You Can Handle

REVIEWS appear to have looked the other way. Fiction than you can handle. This Jewish Not so in northern France, says family with six adventurous children McDougall. “They were in the wake Men Beware Women lives up to its name, which—accord- of the Hundred Years’ War, between Gwen Thompson (GRS’99) ing to the book’s convenient glos- England and France, and they were Miami University Press sary—derives from the Yiddish trying to make God happy with !"#$ %"&'( )"*# word shmutsik, meaning them,” she says. So officials were ignite the study of “dirty.” But dirty doesn’t on the lookout for moral wrong- literature or sabotage do justice to the level doing to prosecute. it? Written with a light, of filth the Schmutzy A century later, bigamy prosecu- deftly comic touch, this children enjoy most tions were commonplace through- novella follows a pivotal days of the week, all out Europe. In fact, McDougall argues year in the life of native while Mama Schmutzy that illegal remarriage eventually New Yorker and rower completely ignores, or became such a great concern to the Malcolm Forrester, who even facilitates, her little Church that it was responsible for arrives at Oxford to study ones’ messy business. radical changes in marriage law, Shakespeare and learns The book, and the including the requirements that as much about himself as he does family’s week, begins on Sunday, marriages be publicized in advance about the Bard. As he navigates a when the entire Schmutzy brood and presided over by a priest. strange new habitat of warm beer, treks barefoot through the “malo- Earlier in the Middle Ages, the dodgy plumbing, blood pudding, dorous Feldman Swamp” in search Church had permitted a practice and HP sauce, the witty, personable of turtles, frogs, and cattails, some known as “clandestine marriage.” This Malcolm charms nearly everyone in of which find their way back home. meant that “if two people, even young his path. But he is unable to wrangle Monday means mud pies in people without their parents’ consent, the ambitious actress Emma, who the kitchen, and the week contin- say, ‘I marry you,’ that’s it. You’re adores him, but refuses to have her ues until Friday morning, when married forever,” McDougall says. ambitions hijacked. When Emma, the children play Leap over the But it was the popular practice of leaving only a breezy note, abruptly Cow Pie in a neighbor’s pasture bigamy, and not clandestine marriage, heads to New York for an off-off- and Mama Schmutzy awakes from that concerned the courts in northern Broadway stage role, Malcolm hops her apparent stupor. She stares France, she argues. As her book shows, on a plane to track her down. in amaze ment at her five elder, people often went to great lengths to It doesn’t go well. But whatever mud-caked children, and cries, remarry: Bertrand, a barrelmaker, the earnest Malcolm endures, from “Oy! Look at this dirt! You’re pretended his first wife had died from Emma’s elusiveness to his parents’ FARSHTUNKEN, all of you! And the plague. Antoine Bonnart changed bitter divorce to breaking a few ribs it’s nearly SHABBOS. We can’t his name. Barthélèmy Bouvier bribed in a rowing mishap, we know he’ll bring in the Sabbath smelling chaplains with cheese, wine, and a be fine. In Thompson’s world, from like COWS!” gold coin. Then, when confronted by Osney Town to the East Village, if All clean breaks loose. The the wife he’d abandoned, he tried to people hurt each other, it’s more out children scrub the house, relocate bribe her to pretend she was actually of clumsiness or preoccupation than amphibians outside, and soap his maid. malicious intent. It’s a sweet world, themselves squeaky clean for Friday They did it because “marriage mat- populated by characters we’d like night’s dinner, prayers, and songs tered to them,” McDougall says. By to sit with over a pint. And for its welcoming the Sabbath. The next the 15th century, married saints were younger inhabitants, it is a universe day they parade in their finest to venerated in sermons and marriage of possibility, this being one of those the synagogue, where no one would was being embraced as a way to become novels that leaves the have guessed they’d been a good Christian. “So if you had been reader with a faint pang of mud-splattered a mere 24 unhappily married the first time, or if hunger to know what will hours earlier. a spouse vanished and you didn’t know become of its characters. While life in the if they were alive or dead, it was a way Susan Seligson Schmutzy household to find the kind of companionship that seems to violate every I think almost all of us prefer to have The Schmutzy Family parental rule ever estab- in life,” she says. It was “also a way to Madelyn Rosenberg lished, Mama knows reintegrate into society.” (GRS’02) her priorities. Dirt isn’t a big deal; For her next book McDougall is Holiday House, Inc. family, faith, and tradition are. lingering in medieval France, this +# ,"-#./-'#0, "1$#$$2*#- And that’s a lesson we could time to investigate how society han- 3"45&)$2*# parents, Rosenberg’s all learn, Schmutzy or not. dled adultery. The Schmutzy Family may be more Leslie Friday Winter–Spring 2013 BOSTONIA !" 552-55_BostoniaWinter13.indd2-55_BostoniaWinter13.indd 5533 22/1/13/1/13 55:47:47 PPMM Visiting Hours personal nursemaid, ordering example, the value of mammography Jennifer Anne Moses you around, complaining all screening or the possible risks of (GRS’83) the time….The ones who don’t hormone replacement therapy. “We Fomite even know they’re sick….The are simply more likely to poke holes in !"#$#’ %"&$' (# a folksy junkies—both those who want and to reject anything that disagrees tapestry of life, loss, love, to live right, those who say, with what we think we know,” writes and faith that unfolds okay, Jesus, take me...the ones Zilberberg, who is on the editorial almost completely within who lie around in bed all day board of several medical journals. the modest confines of refusing to get up...the ones Zilberberg has divided her book into Hope House, a Baton Rouge who look around and decide two parts, “Context” and “Evaluation.” home for people dying of AIDS. The that Hope House isn’t so bad...” Annie The first part introduces the scientific daily dramas at Hope House are played sees herself as the one whose job it is method as it applies to clinical research out by a group of characters of all races, to teach them that no matter what, in medicine and opens readers’ minds ages, and circumstances. There’s young “God is good. Once they understood to the notion that “uncertainty is Lucy, the “skinny little white girl” that…they were able to pass quietly, the only certain feature of science.” wrestling with a heroin habit. There’s and at peace.” SS The second section offers readers Gordon, wise, battered, born-again, a set of tools to examine research and a little in love with Lucy. We meet Nonfiction statistics the media cite, day in and Bunny, the still beautiful, but dying day out, to numbing effect. Zilberberg drag queen, and Veronica, who’d been Between the Lines: Finding the doesn’t patronize the novice reader, dumped outside Hope House four Truth in Medical Literature and she doesn’t gloss over the more years earlier “like a sack of dog food” Marya Zilberberg (MED’92) demanding fundamentals of statistics and left to die. We are privy to their EviMed Research Press and experimental design. Written in deathbed reveries, regrets, and bursts )"* +,%- ". us, rarely a day goes a warm, conversational tone, with of self-awareness. by without hearing casual mention generous use of anecdotes and specific Not everyone at Hope House is of a “new study showing—” (fill in the examples, the book remains accessible likeable. But in Moses’ hands, all are blank). When we or our loved ones throughout. In an age of dumbing- blameless, redeemed in death if not in become gravely ill, we plod forth into down and rampant headline-grabbing life. Hope House is a refuge of sorts, the alternative universe of Google in hyperbole, the book is a call to embrace not just for the sick, but for those a desperate search for answers in the nuance, to be aware of all the subjective who keep the place going. There is form of studies, and more studies. But and logistical factors involved in volunteer Suzette, atoning for her those untrained as scientists set off on presenting and reporting research. Southern belle mother’s these missions unarmed and “Self-determination is predicated sense of entitlement, and vulnerable, and are not much upon knowledge and understanding,” custodian James, who is better served by the reporters she writes. “Don’t be a puppet. We “one of the people who who do the plodding for us. are all born scientists. Embrace your understands.” Like the Zilberberg has written a curiosity.” SS fictional microcosms of guide to remedy the prob- country manors or ships at lem, which she sees as a D!rty Yiddish: Everyday Slang from sea, Hope House embraces public health crisis. An epi- “What’s Up?” to “F*%# Off!” (Dirty the whole bittersweet demiologist with degrees in Everyday Slang) human pageant. Its stor- medicine and public health, Adrienne Gusoff (DGE’73, COM’75) ies are mostly quiet, not she believes that the public’s Ulysses Press earth-shattering, but strung together increasingly adversarial relationship /$."*$ 0"*'1 0,* 22, Yiddish by a compelling, perhaps the most with the medical estab lishment is a was the daily language of more than compelling, force: imminent death.

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