Hermit Book Club #2

Jacobson, Howard. The Finkler Question. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010.

I put off this entry for a week or so, and although I told myself it wasn't because I didn't have a grasp on my conclusions about the book at hand, that's pretty much the case. This is the sixth opening paragraph I've tried.

So Treslove is your hero, except he's far from it. Mourning for his lack of loss, he envies two friends who have lost their wives. They are Jews, and he is not, and a great deal is made of this fact. And there is also a mugging.

The Finkler Question is the Jewish question,¹ and the novel would be at home in any course on Jewish Identity in the Modern World. Which is to say: for all its narrative maneuvers (they are slight but sharply executed) Jacobson has written something other than a straightforward story, full stop. To call it a treatise, which I was about to do, would also be off-target, since part of its success is a convolution of who-said-what ideas and principles; part of the problem is tying down any one view, or standing on it as a platform. The characters' positions and temperaments -- proud Jew, ashamed Jew, envious Gentile, Jew in mourning, Jew in training, Gentile within Jew (and vice versa) -- float upward naturally from what we are told of the men, but rarely do they remain buoyant.

Which is to say: I buy wholesale the self-examining and -questioning at every turn, and there is much of it, even if it paints these men as ideological hypochondriacs. The novel positions their hemmin' and hawin' in tension with some vague sense of time marching on; you begin to wonder if the spiritual/religious and social/political dilemmas Treslove and his friends dwell on are made obsolete by their dwelling on them -- if the parade has gone by.

Which it has. Even stripped of the Jewish question, Jacobson's novel wrenches the gut as a story of lost time. Which, of course, is not the problem of one people. And so when characters make it exclusive, well, that's kind of the point. I don't know. I have a much easier time with Phillip Roth.

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¹ The definite article is slippery but serves a purpose: Treslove's view of Jewish identity is as limited as it is idealized. Contrast that with the author's presentation of conflicting self-identifications rubrics, and hey, you've got yourself an essay.

Hermit Book Club #1: Martin Dressler

Millhauser, Steven. Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer. New York: Random House, 1996.

A few quick thoughts on this, a Pulitzer Prize winner, before I jump into the next in the queue. First, before you look away, it's solidly recommended by this reader. Somehow I slipped into reading this without knowing much beyond the keywords -- New York, ambition, hotels, turn-of-the-century -- and you'd do well to not dwell on the specifics much if you're thinking of picking it up. Not that there is much to spoil, but it makes sense to propel yourself into it while hungry, so you can lap up the short early chapters in one sitting.

I will say only this about the writing: it creates detailed images while rarely feeling ornate. Surprising is its motion through time, a bit like a home video played for guests and a bit like a subway train: long stretches of minor importance covered in fast-forward, steamrolling into stations where the story pivots at brief moments of lingering, pausing to extend their stay. To mix metaphors.

It seems disproportionately critical to say the book morphs itself along the way; the feeling you are left with at its end is hardly the feelings brought forth throughout. It is not uneven. Perhaps it matures. Of course, for a character whose excited efforts in the heat of ambition are at odds with the restlessness and apathy of a job completed, this seems appropriate. Which is to say there is little conflict in these pages, except in the tension between expectation and result.

I don't know, though. Finding it hard to speak directly about this book, although I am sure it is rich and worth your time. Dreams are important in Martin Dressler, although not at all in the way they tend to be. They are waking dreams, creeping diversions from the present state of things rather than contained realities. Which explains these dazed paragraphs, I think.

Hermit Book Club #0

"For office use only."

Minimal commentary on these for the moment, but let me know if you want to talk about any of them. Really, this is just for my own reference. I feel like I'm forgetting something...

Fall 2010

You Never Give Me Your Money, Peter Doggett (Discussed here.)

Portnoy's Complaint, Phillip Roth (It was strange reading this in public.)

Summer 2010
American Pastoral, Phillip Roth (A marsh you like swimming in.)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon (Epic.)
The Beatles: The Biography, Bob Spitz (Indelicate and uneven, but a hard narrative to ruin.)
Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem (A slow wade into a superhero story.)
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of a New Hollywood, Mark Harris (Superb non-fiction.)
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (Actually that good.)


Christmas 2009
Late Nights on Air, Elizabeth Hay (I did not enjoy this.)
Nikolski, Nicolas Dickner (Thankfully, sparse.)
The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga (Read it, because you can.)
Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, Vincent Lam (Barely remembered, but I seemed to enjoy it.)

Unfinished or Abandoned
Chronicles, Volume One, Bob Dylan (So. Many. Names. I'll finish it, it's worth it.)
Eating the Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman (Trying to understand the kids.)
The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie (It's a long story.)
Underworld, Don DeLillo. (Fascinating and sprawling, but couldn't renew it.)
A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson (What textbooks should be, and abandoned accordingly.)