conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a description for a book titled The Family Markowitz about Jewish, Sara, American with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The stories in this collection are so linked and consistent, the book is almost a novel. It tells the comic and endearing history of a family of archetypal American Jews. Rose, the finicky and irrational Jewish mother, becomes increasingly dependent on Percodan and on her two sons, Ed, a hard-headed academic, and Henry, an arty dilettante. Ed's writer wife Sara suffers through teaching creative writing at the local Jewish Community Center. Ed painfully endures an interfaith weekend with crushingly banal Christian ecumenists, even though both he and Sara are completely irreligious. Meanwhile their daughter Miriam alarms them by rediscovering Judaism. the author, whose stories appear regularly in the New Yorker, delights the reader with recognition of the funny in the familiar.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Family Markowitz
  By the time Henry arrives, Rose is home from the hospital. She was there for three days—unconscious part of the time. But then she came to, and she left the hospital, frail but radiant, a bunch of helium balloons from the grandchildren tied to the back of her wheelchair. "She has an amazing constitution for a woman her age," the doctor told Ed. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with her—except that she's taking massive doses of Percodan."
  Rose is recovering in Miriam's room. No one has mentioned a detox program. No one has mentioned when she will be going home. She lies on the pink twin bed and reads Danielle Steel, Belva Plain, and Andrew Greeley. Henry, after his first transports, has collapsed, exhausted with jet lag and stress, in the boys' room. He had laid out his silk pajamas on the bottom bunk and hung his clothes in the closet that Ben and Avi shared before they went off to college. Ed feels as though he is the last adult left in the world.
  When he comes home Friday evening, the kitchen is a disaster area. Rose sits at the table behind a pile of vegetables. Bags of them. Little yellow cherry tomatoes, radishes, curly red-fringed lettuce dripping in the colander. "Henry and Sarah are collaborating on dinner," she tells Ed. She is positively glowing among those vegetables. She looks happier than she has in years. There are grocery bags all over the counters, flecks of carrot peel on the floor. Henry has worked himself into one of his cooking frenzies. Flushed with exertion, he stands over a tray of hollowed-out oranges. He is piping sweet potato into each one with a pastry tube. Rose is beaming, and Ed can't help smiling to see it. "There's nothing like sitting in the kitchen with the family," she says. "If you had to cook in what they give us for kitchens at Venice Vista! It's a disgrace."
  Henry looks up from his orange shells. "I think the gaskets are going on yours, Ed." He points to Ed's refrigerator.
  Henry whirls around, startled by the noise. "What will we do?" he cries. "Oh, I know what we should do. Make a fruit compote and cover it. Make a trifle. What fruit do we have?" He rummages in the grocery bags.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: three more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: When it's time for the four questions, Ed reads them himself. " 'Why is this night different from all other nights? On other nights we eat leavened bread. Why on this night do we eat matzo?' Ben, could you put your feet on the floor?" When Ed is done with the four questions, he says, "So, essentially, each generation has an obligation to explain our exodus to the next generation—whether they like it or not."
  That night in the moaning trundle bed, Ed thinks about the question Miriam raised at the first seder. Why are there four of everything on Passover? Four children. Four questions. Four cups of wine. Lying there with his eyes closed, Ed sees these foursomes dancing in the air. He sees them as in the naive illustrations of his 1960s Haggadah. Four gold cups, the words of the four questions outlined in teal blue, four children's faces. The faces of his own children, not as they are now but as they were nine, ten years ago. And then, as he falls asleep, a vivid dream flashes before him. Not the children, but Sarah's parents, along with the Rothmans, the Seligs, the Magids, and all their friends, perhaps one thousand of them walking en masse like marathoners over the Verrazano Bridge. They are carrying suitcases and ironing boards, bridge tables, tennis rackets, and lawn chairs. They are driving their poodles before them as they march together. It is a procession both majestic and frightening. At Estelle's feet, at the feet of her one thousand friends, the steel bridge trembles. Its long cables sway above the water. And as Ed watches, he feels the trembling, the pounding footsteps. It's like an earthquake rattling, pounding, vibrating through his whole body. He wants to turn away; he wants to dismiss it, but still he feels it, unmistakable, not to be denied. The thundering of history.
  Sarah parks at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, her large purse on the seat next to her, along with a bunch of marked assignments. She has written copiously on each one, making her comments in green because the students find red threatening. Sarah took a series of pedagogy workshops years ago, and she scrupulously applies the techniques she learned. Her students, all adults, always comment on her warmth and motherliness. They don't realize that these are aspects of Sarah's professionalism. They do not see the teacher within, by turns despairing and chortling.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The circle dancing has begun again, fast and furious. The crowds hoist up the bride and groom in chairs. Miriam almost slides off her chair but catches herself just in time. The videographer and his assistant are standing on aluminum ladders to film aerial views of the crowd. Miriam and Jon ride around on their thrones. It is not like flying, more like riding horseback.
  On the ground, Marjorie says to Sarah, "You know, when Zaev and I got married, I think they forgot to lift us in chairs."
  Sarah looks at the sweaty mass of Jon and Miriam's friends, the ring of dark-suited boys around Jon, the lacy circle of girls surrounding Miriam. It is not at all like the wedding she and Ed had. When she and Ed entered the hall together, all the guests at the tables stood up and applauded them. Then there was dancing, the fox-trot, the cha-cha, the samba. It had been a very elegant wedding.
  After Liz and Arnie slip out, Sarah looks at the dancers rushing by hand in hand, some more, some less graceful. She catches sight of Jon in the men's and Miriam in the women's circle. Their flushed faces, Miriam's pinned-up bustle trailing a little. What are they thinking? There is no way to know. They didn't hear a thing their fathers said. They are surrounded by their relatives, yet they are completely oblivious. Yes, she thinks, this is love. The rest will be on video.