Eytan Bayme

Eytan Bayme is a graduate of McGill University and a former stage actor.

His new memoir, High Holiday Porn.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Bayme's reply:

Recently, I was devastated by Shulem Deen’s memoir All Who Go Do Not Return. He was raised as a Chasidic Jew in New York, with no real English education or understanding of the secular world outside his front door. As a teenager, he moves to New Square, New York and becomes a Skverer Chasid, one of the strictest sects within Chasidic Judaism. He marries, has children and immerses himself in the extreme religious beliefs of him community — at one point even trashing the dorm room of a fellow Chasid upon suspicion that he was keeping an inappropriate photograph. But when he starts questioning his way of life and stops believing in God, his community excommunicates him and he loses everything. I loved this book so much because it illustrates the power a community holds over its members at its absolute worst, yet the writer, despite the life shattering restrictions his former friends and neighbors place upon him, still sees the value of peoplehood and the strength of the bonds it can form.

Currently I’m only forty pages into Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and I’m amazed that his story of four European academics’ shared love of a mysterious German novelist has kept me turning pages. I’m also amazed at how Bolano gets away with seven page sentences.

Visit Eytan Bayme's website.

My Book, The Movie: High Holiday Porn.

--Marshal Zeringue