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Thursday August 2, 2007

Three’s a crowd: S.F. writer explores love and betrayal in new anthology

by dan pine
staff writer

Soliciting essays for her new anthology “The Other Woman,” Victoria Zackheim sought superior writing from top-notch women authors, whoever they might be. As it turned out, 13 of the book’s 21 contributors are Jewish.

Zackheim never considered the book’s topic inherently Jewish. She subtitled it “21 Wives, Lovers and Others Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love and Betrayal,” universal themes one and all. Then again, each pops up more than once in the Torah.

“I’m not sure these are Jewish issues as much as they are man/woman issues,” says Zackheim from her San Francisco home. “My purpose was not to offend or shock, but to look at a part of our culture we rarely look at in a dispassionate way. It was never intended to put a light spin on infidelity.”

Contributors to “The Other Woman” include Jewish writers such as Dani Shapiro, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Lynn Freed, Sherry Glaser and Zackheim herself. Some had unfaithful husbands. Some played the role of the “other woman.” Others, like Zackheim, had to cope with the unseen presence of a partner’s ex-wife.

There’s even a touch of Hollywood, as Mary Jo Eustace recounts the trauma of having her husband of 13 years abruptly leave her for actress Tori Spelling.

Pondering infidelity across time and culture, Zackheim theorizes when married people find themselves attracted to someone else, “reason is thrown out the window. ‘Who am I going to hurt down the road? Of course I’ll be caught. Who will I destroy in the process?’ People don’t think about these things. There’s a trail of devastation down the line.”

In this and her other works, Zackheim tends to explore the human equation first. A novelist and writing teacher, she grew up in a progressive Jewish household in Southern California. Though her parents were American-born, the Holocaust claimed many members of Zackheim’s extended family.

“It was very important that we understood we are Jews,” she says, “that we lost our family and it was our responsibility to do what we could in this world to try to minimize racism and hatred. My parents were deeply involved in civil rights, and that was really the heart and soul of my upbringing.”

Currently Zackheim has a new novel in the works as well as a follow-up anthology about women coping with body image issues. But most of her time these days is taken up promoting “The Other Woman.”

And though she has never strayed into the realm of infidelity herself, Zackheim says she knows plenty of men and women who did. For the most part, she says she does not pass judgment.

Unless, of course, major league hypocrisy is involved.

“When one president does a very stupid thing in the Oval Office, the country wants to throw him out,” she says, referring to Bill Clinton. “The next one sends sons and daughters to a war based on lies, and he’s been in office for seven years.”

“The Other Woman: 21 Wives, Lovers and Others Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love and Betrayal,” edited by Victoria Zackheim (276 pages, Warner Books, $24.99).

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