Rodinsky's Room

Rating:
Summary: The creation of an urban legend
Review: This is a book interesting for reasons unintended by - and perhaps unwelcome - to the authors. Rodinsky was a very ordinary man, whose room above an unused synagogue was left unopened for nearly two decades after his death. Since nobody could remember offhand what happened to him, the wildest stories were put about - perhaps he had been a cabalist, who had learned how to walk through walls! Detective abilities in Sherlock Holmes's hometown would appear to have degenerated considerably, as Rodinsky turns out to have been moved first to a hospital, then to a psychiatric institution, and finally buried, all recorded properly by the British welfare state. The truth was tracked down by the two authors, Lichtenstein, a performance artist from a wealthy and assimilated family, indulging herself in guilt, and Sinclair, a local and more cynical (and non-Jewish) journalist, in a post-industrial London neighborhood that sounds like a cross between Dickens and Hanif Kureshi -indeed, by the end of the book Lichtenstein seems intent on recreating "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid", with herself as the downwardly mobile Rosie married to a husband who is the son of a Pakistani and an Irish Catholic - and they name their firstborn son after Rodinsky! The reader is likely to be alternately bored, annoyed, and bewildered by these goings-on. But the real virtue of the book is that it is a textbook example of the creation of what folklorists (i.e. Brunvand) now call an "urban legend". Here we have step by step the process by which an ordinary, normal event is transformed by media hysteria and public gullibility into a supernatural happening. That should ensure its place on reading lists in folklore and journalism courses - and serve as a warning to the rest of us.

Rating:
Summary: The creation of an urban legend
Review: This is a book interesting for reasons unintended by - and perhaps unwelcome - to the authors. Rodinsky was a very ordinary man, whose room above an unused synagogue was left unopened for nearly two decades after his death. Since nobody could remember offhand what happened to him, the wildest stories were put about - perhaps he had been a cabalist, who had learned how to walk through walls! Detective abilities in Sherlock Holmes's hometown would appear to have degenerated considerably, as Rodinsky turns out to have been moved first to a hospital, then to a psychiatric institution, and finally buried, all recorded properly by the British welfare state. The truth was tracked down by the two authors, Lichtenstein, a performance artist from a wealthy and assimilated family, indulging herself in guilt, and Sinclair, a local and more cynical (and non-Jewish) journalist, in a post-industrial London neighborhood that sounds like a cross between Dickens and Hanif Kureshi -indeed, by the end of the book Lichtenstein seems intent on recreating "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid", with herself as the downwardly mobile Rosie married to a husband who is the son of a Pakistani and an Irish Catholic - and they name their firstborn son after Rodinsky! The reader is likely to be alternately bored, annoyed, and bewildered by these goings-on. But the real virtue of the book is that it is a textbook example of the creation of what folklorists (i.e. Brunvand) now call an "urban legend". Here we have step by step the process by which an ordinary, normal event is transformed by media hysteria and public gullibility into a supernatural happening. That should ensure its place on reading lists in folklore and journalism courses - and serve as a warning to the rest of us.

Rating:
Summary: Rodinsky's Room
Review: This is a fascinating story of a search for information, the peeling away of years of misinformation and misunderstanding in an attempt to understand the last years of a lonely man. Along the way, it gives a good rough example of how cities and ethnic communities change. The alternation of authors presents different perspectives on both the man and the search for information while bringing London's East End to life, revealing a place that in most ways doesn't even exist anymore.

Rating:
Summary: A disappointment at best
Review: This is a very thin excuse for a book. The premise is promising, but the authors don't provide a reason for its existence. Rachel Lichtenstein's quest for the story behind Rodinsky's room has its interesting moments, but Ian Sinclair's interludes read like an over-long Vanity Fair feature. The mystery of Rodinsky's life is never fully fleshed out, and I was left wondering "why write the book"? A personal quest should stay personal unless there is something revelatory that will enlighten others.

Rating:
Summary: Rodinsky's Room
Review: This is an amazing book. Rachel Lichtenstein is a young artist, living in London, England, and Iain Sinclair, who also lives in London,is the celebrated author of Lights Out for the Territory, which was given a fantastic review in the New York Times not long ago. Lichtenstein, whose Jewish paternal grandparents found themselves in the Spitalfields area of London after immigrating from Poland in the early 1930s, became fascinated with the story of David Rodinsky, a Jewish man who lived above a synagogue in Spitalfields and mysteriously disappeared from his attic room in the 1960s. No more was heard of him until the room was re-opened more than a decade later, and was found exactly as he had left it - indentation in the bed where he had lain, half-finished tea on the table and the room strewn not only with books but extraordinary artefacts which only hinted at the kind of man he might have been. Rodinksy became an urban myth, nobody really knew him, or what had happened to him, but many claimed his memory. Lichtenstein tells a straightforward tale of her quest to find out what really happened to David Rodinsky, a tale which is something of a mystery story, while Sinclair reflects on Lichtenstein's quest and places it in the context of the London he knows so well. Rodinsky's Room is part mystery, part biography, part travel guide to an extraordinary part of London. Essential reading for anyone interested in Jewish history, identity, immigration, London, Iain Sinclair's writings. This is somehow more than just a book.