The Martin Buber book I carried around while my marriage failed
Tales of the Hasidim was an unlikely companion.
Books have stories, and not only those told between their covers by their authors or in the marketing copy by their publishers. They also have stories told by readers who enjoy them. For me, Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim is a story that involves a failing marriage, an employer who I wanted to impress, the loneliness of business travel, and the associations of a singular volume that make it unique.
I married in 1989 at age 21, and from the start it was not a success. We had just completed college, and I think we each felt compelled as part of the graduation ritual to pick a mate. Two wonderful children came early, for whom I’ll always be grateful, but neither husband nor wife was happy for long.
Four years in, I had a job in publishing that required a lot of travel, and that felt fine. Two years after that, I was in a position with a rather large travel budget and an employer that wanted me out of the office with regular frequency. I was young and earnest and told to grow our business by finding new and unusual retail customers for our books.
