"A Mad Desire to Dance" (Alfred A. Knopf, 288 pages, $25) is the novel that Elie Wiesel was born -- or, more accurately, survived -- to write. It is in many ways a fictional counterpoint to "Night," his brilliant yet horrific memoir of the Holocaust.
Here he delves into the minds of survivors and explores the emotional aftereffects of their experiences. "The survivor's tragedy doesn't stop when his ordeal comes to an end."
Doriel Waldman survived in hiding with his father. His mother was off performing heroic deeds with the partisans, and she, too, made it through. But Doriel did not escape unscathed; siblings were murdered and, in the height of irony, his parents were killed in an accident after the war, shortly before they were to leave for Israel.
Waldman carries a heavy burden of memory that prevents him from experiencing happiness. He rejects every opportunity for pleasure, an attitude familiar to many children (as I am) of survivors and their friends. Doriel "reject[s] joy under the pretext that it has no right to exist and can only be imperfect." He even attempts suicide.
Doriel questions his sanity, convinced he has been attacked by a dubbyk, a malicious spirit. He asks the metaphysical question, "Is a madman who really knows he's mad really mad?"
The bulk of this book is his conversations with a psychiatrist and her notes and impressions. Ultimately, she peels away layers of pain and loss until Waldman allows himself some redemption. But this is not a feel-good novel with a happy ending.
In fact, it is just the opposite. Although the ending is positive, the book is a difficult read. Much of Doriel's rants are elliptical and frankly confusing, and even when the book isn't bewildering, it is complicated. Waldman believes his mother had an affair with a fellow resistance fighter. Later, as an adult, he is bequeathed a fortune from the man and his brother. He takes it as a form of reparation, but there is no forgiveness. "You don't steal the mother of a child who is hiding and pursued by a thousand policemen."
This is in many ways as personal a book as "Night." He describes the plight of a survivor determined to bear witness (as Wiesel did). "Individuals with unsound morals began to accuse him of lying [as they did Wiesel] ... You invented suffering that you never experienced just in order to arouse pity and make money [again, as they did Wiesel]."
