Making Miracles: an interview with novelist Chaim Potok

by Dale Andrew White

An excerpt from the Amazon Kindle collection "Encounters with Authors":

* "Making Miracles"
- a conversation with Chaim Potok, author of "The Chosen" and other novels, in which he discusses the "cultural confrontations" of art and religious fundamentalism...

* Plus: a bonus short story
"In Lieu of Flowers" by Dale Andrew White
an excerpt from the collection "Return of the Dittos"
- the death of an elderly parishioner forever alters the life of a young clergyman...

10 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 29, 2010

About the author

Dale Andrew White's humorous short stories have appeared in Modern Short Stories, Comic Relief, The MacGuffin, Nuthouse, Beyond Science Fiction & Fantasy and numerous other magazines and journals.

Midwest Book Review calls him "a natural born storyteller with an especial flair for blending fantasy, whimsy, satire and a fevered imagination into original stories that are replete with ribald humor and reader-engaging novelty."

BookReview.com warns that to open a Dale Andrew White short story collection "is to invite trouble - and probably enjoy it."

Several of White's short stories can be downloaded separately on Amazon Kindle.

White is a member of Humor Writers of America. His short story collections have been nominated for the James Thurber Prize for American Humor.

White's free-lance magazine journalism has included interviews with novelist Harry Crews, comedian Henny Youngman, cartoonist Gahan Wilson, the Allman Brothers Band, pop artist Andy Warhol,Up the Down Staircase author Bel Kaufman, behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, actor Derek Jacobi, Watership Down author Richard Adams, novelist Eugenia Price, rock 'n' roll icons Little Richard and Bo Diddley, macabre cartoonist Gahan Wilson, Sir Peter Saunders (Agatha Christie's theatrical producer), The Blackboard Jungle author Evan Hunter (also known as Ed McBain, author of the 87th Precinct mystery series), Rumpole of the Bailey creator John Mortimer, novelist Chaim Potok, "Hagar the Horrible" cartoonist Dik Browne and others. Many of his interviews are featured in the collection Encounters with Authors and are also available separately on Amazon Kindle.

Reviews

[Murray · Rating 2 out of 5]

mishmash

The few pages of quotes from Mr. Potok, all of whose fiction I’ve read and been positively affected by, were extremely disorganized but still worthwhile. Substitute the fundamentalist aspect of any religion for the Judaism of his childhood and you have the artist’s dilemma as he describes it. His experience has certainly been my experience as a writer. That content is worth 4 or 5 stars.

Then suddenly we are treated to a short story not written by Chaim Potok and, in fact, having nothing to do with Chaim Potok. After the story, this slim volume ends.

Bewildering. What on earth were the editors thinking?

A mishmash worth looking into solely for the Chaim Potok quotes.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would have loved for this to have been a longer interview. Chaim Potok's interview.

Reading The Book of Lights by Chaim Potok so I re-read this.