Simulation, spectacle, and the ironies of education reform Book

Here is another book outside my realm of experience. I Love Gootie is an appealing and endearing memoir of a Jewish boy growing up with his grandparents. This book which was subtitled My Grandmother's Story, gave a very clear picture of both his grandparents, Rocky and Gootie.

Max grows up learning all the old world ways and tales at Gootie's side. He is much a grandma's boy. Gootie is stuck in a past that she left behind only in body, for her person is in America but her heart and mind are still living the old world ways of Serei. (Lithuania).

Max tells it like he remembers it, being the only boy he knows that shares a room with his grandfather. I believe there is more about that in his previous book, titled Roommates. Here Gootie is in the limelight.

Gootie not only worries but gives advice on everything from Max's choice of occupation to his tutoring nights with a pretty girl. She goes so far as to ride with one night to see just exactly what it is Max does when he goes out at night.

This is a hilarious look at the life of not just Jewish people, but old folks everywhere. The one paragraph that kind of summed it all up for me was, 'Out,' she said, 'all you say now is 'out.' Everything a person could want is in the house-a telephone, a television, every kind of food. What else can a person want?'

Americans were a puzzle to Gootie, one she didn't want to figure out. She gave Max everything she knew; the world as she knew it. Max loved her world even as he all along knew that America was out there waiting for him.