In My Father's Study

In this generally disappointing, overly factual and detailed autobiography, an anthropologist recounts the life of his deceased Russian-Jewish father, Salomon Orlowsky, who came to America as a teenager with his family in 1921 and designed fur hats and toys for a living while dreaming in vain of receiving recognition for his drawings, linoleum cuts, and collages. Instead of simply narrating his father's story and dramatizing unusual incidents--such as when his grandfather hid during one of the Russian pogroms of the late 1890s, leaving his family alone--the author scrutinizes and analyzes his family's history, allowing his own voice and imagination to shine only in rare moments of lyricism--``I thought it natural that my grandmother was linked to ancient trees, to the bottom of the sea, to distant places and an irretrievable past.'' Overall, the book falls into the trap of becoming a family album. Photos. (Mar.)