Uriel Through Eleanor - Book Tour and Giveaway

​ Unlike any memoir you've ever read.
As absurd as it is devastating.
​A literal tug of war between competing and compelling versions of the truth.

Uriel Through Eleanor
by Brian Prousky
Genre: Historical Fiction  

 Uriel “Uri” Katz, World War Two veteran, concentration camp liberator, devout atheist, contrarian, cynic and lifelong bachelor, places an ad in a newspaper seeking a “typist” to assist him in writing his memoir and receives only one reply, from a woman, named Eleanor, who negotiates a deal with him that includes room and board.

Within days of her arrival, Eleanor begins inserting herself into Uri’s story. So much so that she eventually becomes one of its main characters. And while Uri is dismayed and, at times, exasperated by this turn of events, he’s also grown accustomed to Eleanor’s company and cooking, and, as such, begrudgingly puts up with the semi-appropriation of his memoir.

Though what remains imperceptible to Uri—until the novel’s final, thrilling pages—is that Eleanor's appearance in his life wasn't coincidental; it was manufactured by her. And that the two have been intricately linked since the day he marched into the concentration camp.

Brian Prousky’s dazzling new book is memoir-writing turned on its head. It’s a story about storytelling itself. About the power of language to shape and misshape history. And about the equal perils of sharing and not sharing deep-held secrets.


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​ We proceeded through the guards’ section of the camp and along a final, curved, narrow road, and emerged onto the wider main road that intersected countless prisoners’ barracks. It was like emerging into a different world. One that bore little resemblance to the world we’d occupied our whole lives. The smell that was hinted at since we’d entered the camp—a blend of vomit, shit, uncollected garbage, something indefinable and similar to our own unwashed bodies but different in its magnitude, like it had reached the point of decomposing or rotting, which, until then, we didn’t know was the coalesced, accreting emission from the living and dead alike—now enveloped us. It was inescapable and eye-stinging. And, still, not the primary assault on our senses. Which was everything we saw. And were unprepared to see. Despite the withered harbingers we’d already seen. And despite the fact that a good part of the population, perhaps an even more nightmarish part, was inside the barracks. Nonetheless, the vast, almost endless visible part, overwhelmed and overmatched us. There were thousands upon thousands—no, tens of thousands upon tens of thousands—of prisoners. An army of them. Like the strewn wounded of the losing side of a protracted battle. Milling or motionless. Filthy, half-clothed, shrunken, distended, stooped. Scarred and mangled by abuse. Frozen in expressions of anguish. Or unresponsiveness. Or vacated hope. Among them were the unburied dead. Arranged in piles. Every few hundred feet. But also unarranged and alone. Left where they collapsed and took their last breaths. The ground was like cake batter and they were as much a part of its consistency as the garbage. The living walked over them without a thought. Left shoeprints on them.
Within minutes of arriving at the main camp, I saw a male prisoner reach into his mouth and pull out a tooth and stare at it in his palm. I saw another male prisoner cough up blood, more onto his hand than a dirty, frayed rag he carried with him. I saw another male prisoner, who was pant-less and seated against the side of a barracks, swiping weakly and unsuccessfully at hundreds of darting flies that had strayed from the dead and had landed on, and drank from, open wounds on his legs. I saw male and female prisoners lean over and vomit. I saw male and female prisoners lying and writhing or twitching on the ground. I saw male and female prisoners with more bald spots than hair on their heads. I saw a female prisoner with a poorly bandaged hand that appeared to be missing all but one finger. I saw a female prisoner remove a thin sweater from a dead body and shake free a rat from one of the sleeves. I saw a female prisoner eating what looked like a cockroach. After which I tried, without success, to focus my gaze overtop all the prisoners.
A number of officers were shouting orders that may as well have been in a foreign language. None of us could hear what amounted to a lesser assault on our senses.
Three trucks, which had trailed behind us since we entered the camp, and which contained a grossly inadequate amount of food, water and medical supplies, passed in front of us, producing the briefest reprieve, and continued on toward a wooden building with a red cross painted on its roof, indicating, in a cruelly incompatible way, that it was the infirmary.
We began to attract prisoners, who approached slowly and cautiously. Perhaps disbelievingly. The first hundred or so stopped at the far edge of the road as if an invisible wall prevented them from coming nearer. Rows began filling in behind them. And soon more rows were filling in and extending back a considerable distance.
As much as the spectacle of their dehumanized existence had stopped us in our tracks, we too were a spectacle stopping them from coming nearer.
Men on either side of me were crossing themselves. Some wore the same expressions of anguish as the prisoners. Some fell to their knees. Some trembled. Some appeared suddenly lost. Though I imagine it was their minds shutting down to protect them from the deluge of impossible-to-process stimuli. Some, like Danny, cried quietly, using their bandanas to wipe their eyes.
I believe the only reason I wasn’t weeping or gripped by shock as well, was that I was arrested by a competing observation, or maybe an illusion, though, regardless, my mind was trying to make sense of why so many prisoners, the most wretched of the living and the whole of the dead, were drained of all but one colour. Their skin, hair, lips, eyes, visible wounds and blood were shades of grey. I wondered if their souls had vacated their bodies long before they died. And if it was an act of mercy. Leaving shed, ashen-turning husks that couldn’t experience further pain.

*

The officers hadn’t ceased shouting out orders. Though now they were wearing their bandanas, which partially muted their voices, and making their way through the ranks and coming up to us, one at a time, and shaking our arms or shoulders until we pulled ourselves out of our individual fugues and comprehended them.
“Private Katz! Listen to me! Put on your bandana! Now!”
In a couple days we’d learn that the guards, for years, regularly euthanized prisoners who came down with typhus. Sometimes hundreds at a time. And as recently as the previous week. And that the fresh unburied corpses were almost as contagious as the living who were afflicted.
And that the living who were afflicted, for as long as possible, did everything in their power to hide their illness—to pass it off as commonplace deterioration from hunger—given the dire consequences of appearing symptomatic.
And that, as a result, the entire camp was swimming in typhus.
I did what I was told and put on my bandana. Though not without feeling guilty about caring for myself with so much urgency.
“Private Kaplan! Focus on me! Wait! What are you doing?! Private Kaplan!”
I turned my head to see what new trouble Danny had attracted. Except he wasn’t where I expected him to be. He was crossing the road at a quick pace.
The officer spun around and began pursuing him.
“Private Kaplan! Get back here!”
Danny’s hand was raised in the air and his bandana was hanging from it. He reached the wall of prisoners and approached the man I’d observed earlier coughing up blood onto a saturated rag, as well as onto his fingers and palm.
“He needs a medic!”
Two officers were now closing in on him.
Danny removed the rag from the man’s hand and dropped it on the ground and replaced it with the larger, cleaner bandana.
Of all the prisoners requiring immediate medical help, especially those with open wounds for which a bandana would have been a suitable dressing, why he’d chosen that particular prisoner was a mystery.
When I asked him later, he replied, “He just happened to be in my line of sight and I took off toward him.”
“They were all in your line of sight, Danny.”
“I had to do something. I couldn’t stand still and watch.”
“You should have used the bandana to cover your face.”
“He needed it more than me.”
“They all need help. You’re not making sense.”
“Nothing is anymore.”
​

Brian Prousky spent most of his life as two distinct people. The first held a day job and raised a family and was public and sociable. The second ruminated over sentences and wrote books in secret and dreamed of a living a literary life. They shared little in common, mostly their obsessions: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Mozart, Saul Bellow, Roberto Bolano, tennis and hockey.
​
Somehow, summoning up a kind of courage or resolve he’d assumed was absent from his DNA, the first Brian Prousky left his day job, revealed his secret and dedicated himself full-time to writing. And the two Brian Prouskys became one. Now the author of five novels, a collection of short stories and two books of poetry, he lives and works in Toronto, where most of his characters, who struggle with secret and often conflicted lives of their own, and who never quite fit in, do as well.


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What inspired you to write this book?
I wanted to write something both grand and diminutive in scale. The entire book takes place at a kitchen table in a small house in a downtown Toronto neighbourhood. Though, concurrently, the competing memoirs Uriel and Eleanor are writing transport readers over great swaths of time and geography to faraway, far-back places shaped or, more accurately, misshaped, or, even more accurately, maligned by events of enormous historical significance. I also wanted to write about the untrustworthiness of memory, intergenerational trauma and the mounting personal toll of living a double or secret life. And, finally, I wanted to write something that honoured the victims of the Holocaust and their liberators. It was a tall order, though I think I succeeded. I’m hoping readers do as well.

What can we expect from you in the future?
I’m currently writing a book of poetry, titled, Bending In The Direction Of Her Sentences. I’m also two-thirds of the way through a book of three thematically-related stories about storytellers, titled, Voy, Varlane and Vickie. After that, I’ll be turning my attention to an epically long, stream-of consciousness novel that’s been percolating in my mind, and causing me to fill notebooks with fragments of mad thoughts, for twenty years, titled, Alton Dodger’s Doctrine of Unified Religions. Whether I live long enough to finish all this, or for them to finish me, remains to be seen.

Do you have any “side stories” about the characters?
I’ve served up the characters with all their sides.

Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in Uriel Through Eleanor?
They fall on a continuum of victims of trauma from highly functional to nonfunctional. What they believe, they believe to their core. And when confronted with evidence that forces them to believe differently, their cores meltdown. Some find replacement cores, some remain empty shells.

How did you come up with the concept for the book?
I had what I believed was a unique idea for the genre of memoir writing; that the real author wasn’t the memoir writer but the person to whom he was dictating. Hence the title, Uriel Through Eleanor.

Where did you come up with the names in the story?
I tend to have each character try on a bunch of names until one appears to fit properly. There’s no science to it. Just a lot of time spent in the dressing room.

What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
It was like going to the dentist. I didn’t enjoy my time while I was going through it. But, afterward, I was happy I did.

Tell us about your main characters- what makes them tick?
In the case of Uriel’s friend, Danny, and Eleanor’s mother, Frieda, their frayed nerves. Literally. Or, rather, physically. For the rest of the characters, seeking shelter from a storm of memories that stubbornly refuse to peter out.

Who designed your book covers?
The talented crew at Next Chapter, my publisher.

Did you learn anything during the writing of your recent book?
I learned that my words are more than capable of making me cry. More than I’d previously thought possible. I felt ridiculous, watching my tears fall on my open notebook. Writing about the passage of time, was the likely catalyst.

If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?
Off the top of my head, I think Gary Oldman would make a good older Uriel and Michael Cera a good younger Uriel. And I think Helen Mirren would make a good older Eleanor and Emma Stone a good younger Eleanor. And I think Rachel Weisz would make a good younger Frieda. And… that’s it, out of ideas.

Anything specific you want to tell your readers?
My deep and heartfelt appreciation.

What is your favorite part of this book and why?
The part in which Frieda, on her deathbed, shares her story with Eleanor. It was written in tears and blood. The sentences themselves breathe anxiously.

Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?
All were imagined. Some reimagined. In the case of an army major, nicknamed Jaw, mischievously, wickedly and gleefully re-reimagined.

Convince us why you feel your book is a must read.
Because you’ll experience something exhilarating, teetering between the bizarre and deadly serious. Because you’ll delight in the unfolding of the lives of absurdly eccentric, flawed, self-critical, heartbreaking, redemption-seeking characters shaken by past experience and its present reverberations. Because you’ll be spellbound by odd and unexplained behaviours that are ultimately explained. By mysteries that are ultimately solved. Because you’ll feel exhilarated by two narratives that twist and turn and surprise and where fantastic predicaments are the norm. And because you’ll dance joyfully in your mind to the unique rhythm and beat of the writing.

If your book had a candle, what scent would it be?
The smell inside a field hospital.

What did you edit out of this book?
Although one of my goals in writing the book was to elevate bickering to the ranks of high art, I still edited out a healthy amount of bickering between the main characters. You’ll understand why when you experience the healthy amount that remains.

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