人妻少妇专区

Alumni Gazette

A month or so after Sascha Feinstein 鈥�85 released Wreckage: My Father鈥檚 Legacy of Art & Junk (Bucknell University Press), he received a welcome surprise: a four-page, single-spaced letter from his first creative writing teacher, the novelist Thomas Gavin, a professor emeritus at Rochester. It was 鈥渙ne of the greatest letters of my life,鈥� Feinstein says.

Feinstein is now an accomplished writer himself鈥攁 poet, an essayist, and the codirector of the creative writing program at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania. Wreckage tells the story of growing up as the son of Sam Feinstein, a noted painter in the American postwar abstract expressionist movement who was also, according to his son, 鈥渁 hoarder of monumental proportions.鈥�

鈥淭he students he taught revered him,鈥� says Feinstein. 鈥淭hose who painted from his massive still lifes obviously knew he collected plenty of junk, but such facades eclipsed the many layers of things buried within.鈥�

Feinstein鈥檚 mother, also an artist, died of cancer when he was in high school, leaving him alone with his father, whose hoarding consumed entire rooms of the home they shared. His father鈥檚 creativity bred physical and emotional destruction, a kind of contradiction that captivates Feinstein.

鈥淎s a writer, I鈥檓 most interested when opposites fuse with one another,鈥� he says, adding that the overarching theme of Wreckage is 鈥渃reativity married to destruction.鈥� Yet, Feinstein finds that his father鈥檚 ideas about the creative process hold true, for artists, as well as for him as a writer.

鈥淭he artistic concepts that he taught for half a century鈥攍argely about making a canvas its own self-expression, with the fluidity of form and balanced colors creating a lifelike presence鈥攕till seem unassailable to me,鈥� he says. 鈥淓ach painting should inspire a journey for the eye that cannot be experienced in any other way except by viewing that painting. And, ideally, the viewer should hunger to return. Making an artistic statement that fully stands alone, regardless of medium, should be, I think, the goal of any artist. It鈥檚 certainly my greatest aspiration as a writer.鈥�

Has he succeeded in this aspiration? Gavin found that Feinstein鈥檚 account of his father鈥檚 scavenging recalled Robinson Crusoe鈥檚 heroic efforts to rescue remains from his wrecked ship. But, as Gavin wrote in his letter to Feinstein, 鈥淵our superb portrait of [your father] in all his maddening, outrageous glory succeeds in many other ways that Defoe never imagined.鈥�