In Lisa Goldstein’s short story, “Alfred,” Alfred, the ghost, is not scary. The living and their worries are.
“Alfred,” the first story in Travellers in Magic (Tor Books, 1994) opens in 1967. Allison, a girl about twelve or thirteen, meets an old man, Alfred, in the park. Allison, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, notices the tattoos on Alfred’s arm. When he offers to tell her a story, she hesitates. She does not want to hear about concentration camps. Yet, she takes a chance and hears a story about Alfred’s encounter with an angel.
Later, we learn that her six year old brother, Joey, has nightmares and worries about things that their psychologist father does not understand, like airplanes flying into buildings. “I don’t know what it is … ” he says, “We try to make a safe place here for the kids. They’re in no danger here. I don’t understand why he’s so frightened all the time.” (p. 18)
In this paper, I plan to consider what “Alfred” suggests about post-traumatic effects on later generations, and how art like Goldstein’s addresses these effects.
Partial Projected Bibliography
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation, translated by Sheila Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Breton, Andre. What is Surrealism? Selected Writings, edited and introduced by Franklin Rosemont. New York: Monad Press, distributed by Pathfinder Press, 1978.
Burg, Avraham. The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise from its Ashes. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Goldstein, Lisa. The Dream Years. Bantam Books, 1985.
___. Travellers in Magic. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1994.
Kamenetz, Rodger. Stalking Elijah: Adventures with Today’s Jewish Mystical Masters. New York and San Francisco: HarperCollins and HarperSanFrancisco, 1997.
King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. New York: Berkley Books, 1983.
About the presenterMichael Kagan
Michael Kagan double-majored in philosophy and psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. At Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, he received a Masters in Hebrew Letters in 1980, and rabbinic ordination in 1981, with a rabbinic thesis, “A Critique of Polydoxy.” He then returned to Washington University, and took a masters and Ph.D. in Philosophy (with a 1988 dissertation on the ethics of belief called “Psychology vs. Religion”). While there, he served as a congregational rabbi and as a nursing home chaplain. Since 1988, he has taught at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY, where he is now an associate professor of philosophy. Much of his work concerns philosophical issues in teaching, as does the book Educating Heroes: The Implications of Ernest Becker’s Depth Psychology of Heroism for Philosophy of Education (Hollowbrook, 1994). His recent work addresses related issues by examining them in speculative and fantastic literature.