Pattern Editions

Pull The Feathers Only In One Direction
by Ben Simon

While recovering from a stroke in his mid-fifties, Ben Simon (1906-1989) began to dictate a memoir to his wife. Over the next few years he copied and recopied these words in his own hand to practice his fine motor skills. More than fifty years later, his daughter collected the pages here. Simon tells the story of himself as a boy, then named Berel, from Shershev in Belarus. His voice, comic and clear, strange and unsettling, follows his path through the fields of Eastern Europe, in between empires, in the middle of the First World War. Simon writes about a time more and more like our own, where wars senselessly destroy, where people find ways to keep themselves alive. The volume includes an introduction and afterword from his daughter Ruth Diamond, as well as his only known work of fiction.2026 / paperback / 147 pages / $18 + s&h

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