What Book to Read?

Some people really like this book, including the judges who awarded it the Man Booker Prize in 2010. Others, including me, don’t like it much at all.

The book’s main character, Julian Treslove, is a former employee of the BBC who now works as a celebrity double. He has always been a bit jealous of his old school friend Sam Finkler, a successful writer of popular philosophy books with titles like The Existentialist in the Kitchen. Finkler was the first Jew Treslove ever met, and he now privately calls all Jews ‘Finklers’. He is also friends with Libor Sevcik, who is much older and was once briefly their history teacher. Libor and Finkler argue endlessly about the rights and wrongs of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and Finkler takes over the leadership of an anti-Zionist – or self-loathing – group calling itself the ASHamed Jews. Early in the story, Treslove is mugged by a woman who mutters something that may or may not have been ‘You Jew’ as she robs him. This incident crystallises all Treslove’s previous curiosity and envy about what he sees as Jewishness – Finklerishness – and he decides that somehow he too must be a Jew.

This is not a book where very much happens. Treslove falls in love with Hephzibah, who is setting up a museum of Anglo-Jewish culture. In contrast, Libor and Finkler have both recently lost their wives. For me the strongest passage in the book is when Libor is reflecting on the impossibility – yet necessity – of accepting that his beloved Malkie is dying. But most of the time they are all arguing about what it means to be Jewish. And against the almost ludicrous assault on Treslove is set mention of real anti-Semitic incidents – and one atrocity committed by a Jewish settler –that take place around the world.

Much of this is supposed to be funny; those who like the book praise it for its humour. I can see that some of the writing is amusing, as in: ‘She had hit upon a paradox. (Think of it – Tyler hitting on a paradox! The things of which a husband does not know his wife to be capable.)’ But I also think there is a strong sexist basis to this and to the general treatment of women in the story; mostly they are no more than mirrors in which the men are reflected. And a description of a man trying to reverse his circumcision by hanging weights on the skin of his penis leaves me unmoved.

But even more problematic are the arguments about being Jewish. Much of it is presumably satirical, since Jacobson believes that there are in fact as many different ways of being Jewish as there are Jews. Treslove is a foolish man; his opinion can never be relied on. ‘He wasn’t the real McCoy, that was what it came to. Not only wasn’t he a Jew, he was a jest to Jews. The real McGoy.’ Indeed some critics suggest that his attempt to appropriate Jewishness is in itself anti –Semitic because of his stereotyping of so called Jewish characteristics. Finkler’s ASHamed Jews group is also ridiculed as confused and ineffectual, though I can see that some Jews might well feel ambivalent about Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians. So what is satirical and what isn’t? Comments by Hephzibah and Tyler make sense to me, but I have no idea whether the author is reversing the male characters’ sexism, and giving the good lines to the women, or whether their views are equally to be discounted as satire.

Admirers of the book argue that one of its strengths is that the humour is cleverly undercut by the reality of anti-Semitism. ‘After a period of exceptional quiet,’ Hephzibah thinks, ‘anti-Semitism was becoming again what it had always been — an escalator that never stopped, and which anyone could hop on at will.’ Yet Libor dismissively remarks: ‘It’s not Krystallnacht’. Perhaps by including mention of an Israeli massacre Jacobson is suggesting not that neither Zionism nor anti-Semitism can be justified, but if so, it is left very much up to the reader to find their own way to this conclusion.

Overall it probably comes down to one’s sense of humour. Most of what people find funny in this book I find merely tedious.

You can read more about Howard Jacobson here. Other reviews and comments can be found here, here and here.