To the Editor:

Alan Mintz’s review of A.B. Yehoshua’s beautiful novel, A Journey to the End of the Millennium [July-August], is tendentious and misleading. After telling us of the failed attempts of the novel’s protagonist, Ben-Attar, to have rabbinic authorities recognize the legitimacy of his two wives, Mr. Mintz presents a tidy summary of what he calls the book’s “philosophical scaffolding”: “Sephardi culture . . . is made into nothing less than the bearer of Eros while Ashkenazi culture . . . becomes the bearer of Thanatos.” Without wanting to spoil the story for your readers, let me just note here that the last part of the book, which Mr. Mintz ignores, narrates what happens after the second of the rabbinical-court proceedings involving Ben-Attar’s dual marriages. In this lengthy coda, Yehoshua movingly evokes the strong bonds between the two cultures that persist despite, and are even created by, the conflict over the legitimacy of Ben-Attar’s marital state. One must be seriously tone-deaf to finish the book and conclude, as Mr. Mintz does, that one has read a “stale” rehash of the ideas of “countercultural gurus.”

It would be too bad if Mr. Mintz’s grossly simplifying review led COMMENTARY readers to pass up a rich and rewarding literary experience. There are not many of them on offer these days.

Michael W. Schwartz
New York City

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Alan Mintz writes:

Michael W. Schwartz and I agree that A Journey to the End of the Millennium is a beautiful and invigorating novel, but we may reasonably disagree as to whether some of its more conceptually ambitious aspirations are realized. The complex plotting in the novel’s conclusion may indeed invoke a vision of an interplay between Sephardi and Ashkenazi modes, yet I am not convinced that these constructs can bear the weight of the vision.

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