A writer and her ideas - Nicole Krauss story in New Yorker

Nicole Krauss's Zusya on the Roof in the current New Yorker isn't exactly a story, more of a character study or profile of a personality - not anything really happens in this short piece of fiction, on the level of plot, but to give her her due Krauss covers the whole scope of the protagonist's complex life in a few pages. And the protagonist is not named Zusya. Brief synopsis: Broadman is standing on the roof of a building holding a baby, his grandson. Scary. Good beginning that can and does keep us reading. We learn that Broadman has come back from the dead, and after a flash of thinking this is an IB Singer supernatural story, Krauss let's us know she's speaking figuratively - he had been in some kind of induced coma for two weeks. During that time, he had a series of dreams about Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, Old Testament commandments - Krauss gets to show off her knowledge of this arcana here. What Brodman learns from his ordeal is a simple message that one may not become a great prophet, thinker, leader - but each of us should (must?) fulfill the destiny that is ours, however modest (this comes from a fable about a man named Zusya) - then we learn of the disappointments in B's life - his mediocre scholarship, testy relation with his wife, estrangement from his daughters, lack of respect from his students, all very sad - but the one bright spot is the birth of grandson, born during his recovery - and he imagines that his recovery and his coma have a direct spiritual connection to the grandson. At end of this material, all internal and not dramatized, Brodman goes to his grandson's briss and absconds with the baby, bringing him up to the roof. Well, there's the action of the story and it's too bad Krauss couldn't do more with that - although maybe she will, maybe this is an opening piece of a longer work. As seen from her novels, Krauss is a really good writer brimming with thoughts and ideas, but sometimes she gets ahead of her skis, so to speak, and can't pull the ideas together - her writing can be a little formless and meandering, which for some readers may be her strength.