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Click Here to Purchase: Hide and Seek/Hidden and Found: In Search of a Balanced Life: Memoirs, Stories,and Essays by Howard L. Schwartz on IPBooks.net
Excerpt from Book Review:
Hide and Seek/Hidden and Found is above all an exercise in self-analysis. Schwartz favors honesty over accuracy, feelings over facts in the way he tells his stories. His memoirs are therefore based on “screen memories,” a term from psychoanalysis that speaks to memories that may or may not be based on actual events but on images of the past, remembered or perhaps formed in the present from past feelings, in which old desires and conflicts may be better understood and perhaps resolved.
. . . the book that provide glimpses Schwartz’s life, from his tender years in the heavily Jewish Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey (familiar to fans of Philip Roth’s novels) . . . to his stint as a Navy psychiatrist during the Vietnam war, moonlighting to earn enough income and conflicted about his duties as a Reservist versus his wish to best serve his shell-shocked patients . . . to his regret in not admitting to a beloved teenaged granddaughter begging for special recognition that, at least in the moment, she was indeed his favorite. His memories are vivid, evocative of a more innocent era, sometimes sexy and often heart-rending. However there is also much to admire in the threads of self-analysis that weave throughout the book, whether Schwartz is dissecting Tolstoy or paying homage to The Catcher in the Rye, invoking mythology or creating fictional characters like the brothers Kenny and Benny (representative of the relationship young Howard wished he had had with his younger brother), revealing his ambivalence about his mother or his passion for his wife.
In sum, Hide and Seek/Hidden and Found is a unique self-festschrift to a life well-lived.
“I don’t feel good about any of this,” admits Schwartz in his candid confessional about his relationship with his brother, “except for my ability to be honest with myself.” As a patient or analysand, this is all anyone can hope for. As readers looking into Schwartz’s life story and self-analysis, we can feel good about his honesty, insights and mastery of language as well.
Click Here to Read The Full Review: by Carol L. Skolnick: Hide and Seek/Hidden and Found: In Search of a Balanced Life: Memoirs, Stories,and Essays by Howard L. Schwartz.