Moriel Rothman-Zecher reads like a queer Jewish James Joyce. In his new book, Before All the World, his playful and experimental prose incorporates Yiddish, English, and combination words in a way I’ve never seen before. He writes, “If Gittl were instead a denizen of a city, even just a pinsk or a lutsk, to speak not from varshe and vilne, she could with ease, she knew, find herself a whole quorum of men mit muscles and also mit wit and with tongues what danced and wrestled in elegantish dawns and feversome evenings, o wa.”
Later on in the book, we get, “Leyb took off his shoes, yoh, and looked back up at Charles, what had turned and was walking a few paces to the otherside of the apartment, what was only being one room, around the edges of what were a paperoverspilling bookshelf and a cornerbed kept company by a clothesbox and a paperoverspilling table kept company by two chairs and a rustful stove kept company by one sink and some shelves and one Charles, and a smalledge door, and in the center of the room perched a springish couch.”
The narrative turns into a pure lament, as one of the two Jews who survived the pogroms that killed everyone in her village, the fictional shtetl Zatelsk, goes from body to body, remembering each person and praying over them. At other times, the book breaks into fragmented dialogue that reads like poetry:
A puffling, Charles said.
What’s a puffling, Leyb said.
A young puffin.
What’s a puffin.
It’s a sadeyed fellow from iceland.
Sad because they’re boiling him?
Before All the World tells a gorgeous and important story about loss and diaspora and queerness and love.
Rena J. Mosteirin wrote Experiment 116 (Counterpath press, 2021), Half-Fabulous Whales (Little Dipper, 2019) and Nick Trail’s Thumb (Kore Press, 2008). She is the co-author of Moonbit (punctum books, 2019) an academic and poetic exploration of the Apollo 11 guidance computer code. Mosteirin is an editor at Bloodroot Literary Magazine, teaches creative writing workshops at Dartmouth College and owns Left Bank Books, a used bookstore in Hanover.