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Set in Hollywood, ambitious debut novel tackles big ideas

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Message: If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/38368/full/38368/set-in-hollywood-ambitious-debut-novel-tackles-big-ideas/ Set in Hollywood, ambitious debut novel tackles big ideas Thursday, June 18, 2009 | by stacey palevsky Chandler Burr was booted out of a Jerusalem yeshiva for “polluting” the school. It was more than two decades ago, when he was 23 and in Israel at the end of a yearlong backpacking trip through Asia. At the Western Wall, a young Orthodox man approached him and invited him to learn more about Judaism. He accepted the invitation <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 360px;"></div> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 216px;"><img alt="Achandlerburr" class="left" height="328" src="/images/uploads/z_photos_2009/z06_19_09/Achandlerburr.jpg" width="216" /> <div class="caption"></div> </div> Over a lunch of kosher sandwiches, Burr explained that his father grew up in Chicago and his mother in Scotland. Oh, and that she was Protestant. When the rabbi found out, he pulled Burr aside and said, “‘You’re unclean, you have polluted our yeshiva, you have caused us to sin by teaching Torah to a non-Jew. Your father is involved in the ongoing Holocaust of the Jewish people,’” Burr, 46, recalled. “And he told me to get out of Israel, and to never come back.” That experience partially inspired Burr’s debut novel, “You or Someone Like You,” a story he worked on for 10 years. It was published this month. The book is the story of Anne and Howard Rosenbaum, a middle-aged married couple who fell in love with each other (and literature) during their first years of college at Columbia University. Anne, a non-Jew, was the daughter of a British diplomat. Howard grew up in an Orthodox Brooklyn family, but by the time he met Anne had chosen a secular life. When the book begins, they’re living in a spacious house in Los Angeles. Howard is a Hollywood executive. Anne, known by Howard’s colleagues as the woman who always has a book in hand, is asked by a well-known producer to create a recommended reading list, which evolves into a book club for the Hollywood elite and turns Anne into a media star. <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 126px;"><img alt="AChandlerburr2" class="left" height="149" src="/images/uploads/z_photos_2009/z06_19_09/AChandlerburr2.jpg" title="Chandler " width="126" /> <div class="caption">Chandler</div> </div> Their marriage becomes tumultuous when an identity crisis pulls Howard back to the Orthodoxy he left behind decades earlier. “The novel addresses Judaism, specifically, and organized religion in general, and universalism, divisiveness and tribalism — but those ideas are subordinate to the story of the characters,” Burr said. “The novel is fundamentally about characters who change,” he added. “Howard becomes a different person. And at the same time he’s the same person. When we make changes, are we different? Or the same? I don’t think we are more or less the same. I think people really deeply change.” Though the book focuses on Judaism, Burr said it is emblematic of all faith groups. “I wrote this book about Judaism because that is my experience, but I could have written it about any religion,” he said. “All of them divide people into two groups — [the faith group] and those who are less than them in the eyes of their deity.” “You or Someone Like You” is a work of fiction. Sort of. The book actually contains more real characters than fictional ones. Burr, a longtime author, screenwriter and New York Times reporter, leaned on his journalistic experience to research real people and turn them into characters. He inserts into the novel many real-life entertainment and publishing heavyweights, such as movie producer J.J. Abrams, actress Sandra Bernhardt and Vanity Fair editor Anne Sarkin (among 95 others). Burr was raised in an Episcopal but culturally Jewish home in Washington, D.C. He grew up attending church and also eating gefilte fish with horseradish. That melting pot made him fascinated and appalled by the ways in which faith and identity often divide us. “You or Someone Like You” explores this through the intimate prism of marriage. “I have always known that we are not our DNA,” Burr said. “We are what we choose to be. We are a culture, we are our values. And we decide what they are.” “You or Someone Like You” by Chandler Burr (336 pages, Ecco/HarperCollins, $25.99) Chandler Burr will speak about his novel at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 25 at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera; 12 p.m. June 26 at Rakestraw Books, 522 Hartz Ave., Danville; and 7 p.m. June 26 at A Great Good Place for Books, 6120 LaSalle Ave., Oakland.

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