A newsletter arrived in my inbox this morning from the Foundation for Jewish Culture. It contained the following announcement: “Congratulations to Irina Reyn, 2009 recipient of our Samuel Goldberg & Sons Prize for Emerging Writers of Jewish Fiction for her fantastic first novel…”
“Emerging Writer” is a slippery label. It enables award-giving bodies to applaud themselves for helping to midwife a literary reputation into being. But what does it mean to be “emerging”? Wretched? Starving? Insecure? On that knife-edge between redemptive visibility and utter obscurity? Most of the writers who receive these kinds of awards seem, frankly, emerged.
I had never heard of Ms. Reyn until today. Here is the bio from her homepage:
“Irina Reyn is the editor of Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster). Her first novel What Happened to Anna K. was published by Touchstone in August 2008. Irina's work has appeared in some of the following publications: One Story, Post Road, Tin House, Los Angeles Times, Town & Country Travel, Poets & Writers, The Forward, Nextbook, Ballyhoo Stories, San Francisco Chronicle, The Moscow Times. She reviews literary fiction and nonfiction. Please see a sample of her work on the Book Criticism and Writings pages. Her fiction and personal essays can be found in anthologies, including Not Like I'm Jealous or Anything: The Jealousy Book (Delacorte), Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women (Hyperion) and A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross-Cultural Collicsion and Connection (OV Books). Irina has been awarded fellowships at the Sewanee Writers Conference, Wesleyan Writers Conference, and at the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College. She has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook and Ledig House. Irina was born in Moscow, and currently divides her time between Pittsburgh, PA and Brooklyn, NY. She is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.”
Anyone who is in a position to “divide her time” is not “emerging”. Anyone who has an assistant professorship at the University of Pittsburgh is not “emerging”. Anyone who has such an impressive list of publications perhaps deserves an award for literary achievement; but she is not “emerging”. Why do the prizes go to those who need them least? This is an often-asked question, but it makes my intestines tighten in rage (and envy, admittedly) every goddamn time.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
THE TERRIBLE PREDICAMENT OF GROUCHO MARX
In a Marx Brothers film, when Groucho makes a joke, no other character knows it. Margret Dumont is scandalized by Groucho’s irreverence, but she doesn’t know that a joke has been made. Chico and Harpo have no idea. Groucho knows he’s made a joke; his deliciously smug, self-satisfied smirk leaves no doubt. Groucho is unique amongst the Brothers. Chico and Harpo experience no difficulty in eliciting laughter from fellow characters. During the famous scene in A Night at the Opera (1935), they reduce a gaggle of children aboard a ship to helpless giggles by clowning around with musical instruments. Harpo is able (albeit with the utmost chastity) to charm women. But not so for Groucho. Aside from Groucho himself, only we know that he’s funny. We, the audience, are the only participants in a Marx Brothers film who have the power to affirm that Groucho is what he knows he is. It’s a lonely universe for Groucho Marx, dependent as he is upon us, reaching through the screen for our validation. Without us, Groucho is a poor, bumbling, uncouth, misunderstood, perpetually stymied aspirant in a world organized, controlled and land-mined by WASP privilege and prerogative.
It’s instructive to regard Groucho Marx as belonging to many (often overlapping) traditions simultaneously: vaudeville, wiseguy, Purim shpiel, etc. But he also accidently transplants himself into the High Brow English tradition of the Wit; a tradition that (though it has modern roots with the Cavalier poets of the seventeenth century) begins in earnest with Oscar Wilde, undergoes an interesting permutation with P.G. Wodehouse, and extends into our own day with Stephen Fry.
In a work by Wilde, the Wit is often dismissed as frivolous by the more humorless characters, but his status as Wit is acknowledged. In The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Jack knows that Algernon is funny, or is at least trying to be. Even though this play is little more than an intricate, gauzy web of gleaming, highly stylized dialogue, the Wit (the Wilde surrogate) manages to stand out. I don’t think there is a single instance in the whole of Wilde’s oeuvre when a quip is delivered by the Wit that only the audience can recognize. Indeed, humor is a type of currency in Wilde, a hugely inflated one. This has interesting implications for the “straight” characters, like Lady Bracknell.
LADY BRACKNELL: Do you smoke?
JACK: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
LADY BRACKNELL: I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is.
Lady Bracknell is the Margret Dumont of The Importance of Being Earnest. Jack doesn’t laugh at her joke; he’s too busy being terrified by the prospect that she might deem him unworthy of her daughter, Gwendolyn. Here, it is the Authority Figure, not the Wit, who relies upon the audience to recognize her joke. But as Lady Bracknell doesn’t ever seem to know that she’s made a joke, she’s spared the existential torment on the brink of which Groucho perpetually teeters. Lady Bracknell exists in a sort of prelapsarian innocence.
This sort of naïveté is an animating feature of Wodehouse, and is nowhere more pronounced than in the Jeeves and Wooster stories. They are narrated in the first person by Bertie, to dazzling effect. Although Bertie is not apparently very bright, Wodehouse gives him the most brilliant, witty lines. From all we know of Bertie, it should seem impossible and narratively wrong that such a stupid character should be capable of such flights of humor. Wodehouse’s achievement lay in his ability to make it work seamlessly. Groucho knows he’s funny; he’s alienated from his fellow characters. Bertie Wooster, however, is somehow alienated from his own wit, from his own manifest (if deeply submerged) intelligence.
The question arises: Is Bertie Wooster the Wit, or is it Jeeves, his omnicompetent valet? Is there a Wit at all? Or is Wodehouse himself the Wit, performing his function via the medium of his fiction? Jeeves is not at all unlike Groucho: a condescending, wisecracking man condemned by Fate to subservience. Fellow characters respond to Jeeves’ intelligence, but never to his jokes. Only the reader knows that Jeeves is funny. But Jeeves lacks Groucho’s volatility, his defining unease that approaches desperation.
Stephen Fry’s first two novels, The Liar (1993) and The Hippopotamus (1994) both feature a clearly identifiable Wit; Adrian Healey in the former, Edward Wallace in the latter. Fry creates worlds most sympathetic to his Wits. In both fictions, though the plot and dialogue are highly stylized, the Wits are much more real people than any of the aforementioned characters. They are real people, inhabiting a world with fellow real people. Everyone is cognizant of the full scope of everyone else’s personality, jokes included. The Wits are isolated for the same reasons that any real person might be isolated, but never because the world has been rigged in such a way so as to render humor unrecognizable.
Among the examples I’ve provided, therefore, Groucho is unique. His imprisonment in the film, divorced from any human brotherhood, gives him a sealed-in-amber quality. It also creates an urgency that we watch him, because it’s only through our laughter that he, if only fleetingly, can be liberated from the terrible predicament of non-being. The viewer is the god whose attention is required to create Groucho, and to ensure his continued creation.
It’s instructive to regard Groucho Marx as belonging to many (often overlapping) traditions simultaneously: vaudeville, wiseguy, Purim shpiel, etc. But he also accidently transplants himself into the High Brow English tradition of the Wit; a tradition that (though it has modern roots with the Cavalier poets of the seventeenth century) begins in earnest with Oscar Wilde, undergoes an interesting permutation with P.G. Wodehouse, and extends into our own day with Stephen Fry.
In a work by Wilde, the Wit is often dismissed as frivolous by the more humorless characters, but his status as Wit is acknowledged. In The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Jack knows that Algernon is funny, or is at least trying to be. Even though this play is little more than an intricate, gauzy web of gleaming, highly stylized dialogue, the Wit (the Wilde surrogate) manages to stand out. I don’t think there is a single instance in the whole of Wilde’s oeuvre when a quip is delivered by the Wit that only the audience can recognize. Indeed, humor is a type of currency in Wilde, a hugely inflated one. This has interesting implications for the “straight” characters, like Lady Bracknell.
LADY BRACKNELL: Do you smoke?
JACK: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
LADY BRACKNELL: I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is.
Lady Bracknell is the Margret Dumont of The Importance of Being Earnest. Jack doesn’t laugh at her joke; he’s too busy being terrified by the prospect that she might deem him unworthy of her daughter, Gwendolyn. Here, it is the Authority Figure, not the Wit, who relies upon the audience to recognize her joke. But as Lady Bracknell doesn’t ever seem to know that she’s made a joke, she’s spared the existential torment on the brink of which Groucho perpetually teeters. Lady Bracknell exists in a sort of prelapsarian innocence.
This sort of naïveté is an animating feature of Wodehouse, and is nowhere more pronounced than in the Jeeves and Wooster stories. They are narrated in the first person by Bertie, to dazzling effect. Although Bertie is not apparently very bright, Wodehouse gives him the most brilliant, witty lines. From all we know of Bertie, it should seem impossible and narratively wrong that such a stupid character should be capable of such flights of humor. Wodehouse’s achievement lay in his ability to make it work seamlessly. Groucho knows he’s funny; he’s alienated from his fellow characters. Bertie Wooster, however, is somehow alienated from his own wit, from his own manifest (if deeply submerged) intelligence.
The question arises: Is Bertie Wooster the Wit, or is it Jeeves, his omnicompetent valet? Is there a Wit at all? Or is Wodehouse himself the Wit, performing his function via the medium of his fiction? Jeeves is not at all unlike Groucho: a condescending, wisecracking man condemned by Fate to subservience. Fellow characters respond to Jeeves’ intelligence, but never to his jokes. Only the reader knows that Jeeves is funny. But Jeeves lacks Groucho’s volatility, his defining unease that approaches desperation.
Stephen Fry’s first two novels, The Liar (1993) and The Hippopotamus (1994) both feature a clearly identifiable Wit; Adrian Healey in the former, Edward Wallace in the latter. Fry creates worlds most sympathetic to his Wits. In both fictions, though the plot and dialogue are highly stylized, the Wits are much more real people than any of the aforementioned characters. They are real people, inhabiting a world with fellow real people. Everyone is cognizant of the full scope of everyone else’s personality, jokes included. The Wits are isolated for the same reasons that any real person might be isolated, but never because the world has been rigged in such a way so as to render humor unrecognizable.
Among the examples I’ve provided, therefore, Groucho is unique. His imprisonment in the film, divorced from any human brotherhood, gives him a sealed-in-amber quality. It also creates an urgency that we watch him, because it’s only through our laughter that he, if only fleetingly, can be liberated from the terrible predicament of non-being. The viewer is the god whose attention is required to create Groucho, and to ensure his continued creation.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Member of the Tribe?
Einstein, Josephus, Woody Allen, Spinoza, most science Nobel laureates in the 1980s…and Achmadinejad?
The Israeli newspaper Haarets has published an intriguing little notice entitled: “Is Ahmadinejad trying to hide his Jewish roots by bashing Israel?”
Here is the full text:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's scathing attacks against Israel and his repeated denials of the Nazi Holocaust could be motivated by a desire to conceal his own Jewish roots, an Iran expert told The Daily Telegraph on Saturday. The British newspaper examined the Iranian leader's identity card which he displayed in public during his country's elections in March 2008. The ID card bears his family's original surname, Sabourjian, which is a Jewish name that means cloth weaver, according to The Daily Telegraph.
The Sabourjians have historically been concentrated in the same region of Iran where Ahmadinejad was born, according to the report. Ahmadinejad's identity papers indicate that his family changed its name and converted to Islam after he was born, the British newspaper said. Iranian observers suggested that the president's constant verbal assault against Israel and Jews may be an attempt to prove his loyalty to Shia Islam while making every effort to hide his Jewish past. "This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's background explains a lot about him," Iranian studies expert Ali Nourizadeh told The Telegraph. "Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith." "By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections," Nourizadeh said. "He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society."
The Israeli newspaper Haarets has published an intriguing little notice entitled: “Is Ahmadinejad trying to hide his Jewish roots by bashing Israel?”
Here is the full text:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's scathing attacks against Israel and his repeated denials of the Nazi Holocaust could be motivated by a desire to conceal his own Jewish roots, an Iran expert told The Daily Telegraph on Saturday. The British newspaper examined the Iranian leader's identity card which he displayed in public during his country's elections in March 2008. The ID card bears his family's original surname, Sabourjian, which is a Jewish name that means cloth weaver, according to The Daily Telegraph.
The Sabourjians have historically been concentrated in the same region of Iran where Ahmadinejad was born, according to the report. Ahmadinejad's identity papers indicate that his family changed its name and converted to Islam after he was born, the British newspaper said. Iranian observers suggested that the president's constant verbal assault against Israel and Jews may be an attempt to prove his loyalty to Shia Islam while making every effort to hide his Jewish past. "This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's background explains a lot about him," Iranian studies expert Ali Nourizadeh told The Telegraph. "Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith." "By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections," Nourizadeh said. "He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society."
Thursday, September 10, 2009
"You lie!"
A good deal of fuss is now being made about South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst (“You lie!”) after President Obama coolly assured a joint session of Congress last night that his healthcare reform measures would not cover illegal immigrants. Some observations:
(1) Whether or not the various versions of the healthcare reform initiative now circulating would provide coverage to illegal immigrants is something that can be checked. I have not read the bills. But surely we can ascertain whether they contain language that might suggest as much. It is, unlike so much else, knowable. Rep. Wilson might have yelped out of ignorance. But so might the bulk of people now excoriating him. Let’s find out.
(2) Rep. Wilson’s outburst occurred during a choreographed pause in the speech, meant for applause. If the Democrats are entitled to shriek like barnyard animals in approval, then surely Rep. Wilson may be permitted his own outburst. Recent “town hall” meetings have been disrupted and paralyzed by reactionary cretins. Rep. Wilson disrupted nothing. He didn’t prevent the President from speaking. He didn’t make a circus of himself by hoisting a placard of Obama wearing a Hitler moustache. A pause was inserted for audience response. He (very crisply, actually) provided his. We cannot blame him for providing the wrong response.
(3) The President of the United States is not a king. The deference he receives is disgraceful. Obama is the Commander and Chief of the Military, and Head of the Bureaucracy. He is a civil servant. Nothing more. An unmannerly outburst during one of his speeches hardly justifies the fuss now being made. When Rep. Wilson bellowed “You lie!”, the Congress came very close to looking like a parliamentary house. This is good, and we should see more of it. The atmosphere of our legislative debate is soporific. We should abhor it.
Therefore, while I wholeheartedly support Obama’s healthcare reform efforts, I also support Rep. Wilson’s efforts to inject some much-needed zest into what otherwise would have been a boring orgy of leader-worship.
(1) Whether or not the various versions of the healthcare reform initiative now circulating would provide coverage to illegal immigrants is something that can be checked. I have not read the bills. But surely we can ascertain whether they contain language that might suggest as much. It is, unlike so much else, knowable. Rep. Wilson might have yelped out of ignorance. But so might the bulk of people now excoriating him. Let’s find out.
(2) Rep. Wilson’s outburst occurred during a choreographed pause in the speech, meant for applause. If the Democrats are entitled to shriek like barnyard animals in approval, then surely Rep. Wilson may be permitted his own outburst. Recent “town hall” meetings have been disrupted and paralyzed by reactionary cretins. Rep. Wilson disrupted nothing. He didn’t prevent the President from speaking. He didn’t make a circus of himself by hoisting a placard of Obama wearing a Hitler moustache. A pause was inserted for audience response. He (very crisply, actually) provided his. We cannot blame him for providing the wrong response.
(3) The President of the United States is not a king. The deference he receives is disgraceful. Obama is the Commander and Chief of the Military, and Head of the Bureaucracy. He is a civil servant. Nothing more. An unmannerly outburst during one of his speeches hardly justifies the fuss now being made. When Rep. Wilson bellowed “You lie!”, the Congress came very close to looking like a parliamentary house. This is good, and we should see more of it. The atmosphere of our legislative debate is soporific. We should abhor it.
Therefore, while I wholeheartedly support Obama’s healthcare reform efforts, I also support Rep. Wilson’s efforts to inject some much-needed zest into what otherwise would have been a boring orgy of leader-worship.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
A Bar Mitzvah, of Sorts
When does a Jewish boy become a man? Not when he first publicly reads from the Torah. Not when he marries. Not when he has his first child. Not when he makes his first five-figure donation to the Jewish National Fund. No.
Everyone acknowledges that Heartburn, like Irony, is a predominantly (if not exclusively) Jewish affliction. A Jewish boy becomes a man when his acid reflux reaches such an unbearable intensity that he requires high-tech medical intervention.
Yesterday, I became a man: I had an upper endoscopy.
This entails the passage of a snakelike instrument through the throat, esophagus, stomach and duodenum. Snapshots of the Semitic Digestive Tract (SDT) are taken. A sample of Inflamed Semitic Tissue (IST) is removed, and sent to the lab. Next, the doctor prescribes a medication that, while raising expectations all around, does not actually work.
(I should author a book about my struggle. A memoir. It will be inspiring. My bodily vicissitudes will interest university-educated readers everywhere. It seems to be working for Mara Altman, who has just published an execrable looking thing entitled Thanks for Coming: One Young Woman’s Quest for an Orgasm [Harper Perennial, 2009]. God help us.)
Everyone acknowledges that Heartburn, like Irony, is a predominantly (if not exclusively) Jewish affliction. A Jewish boy becomes a man when his acid reflux reaches such an unbearable intensity that he requires high-tech medical intervention.
Yesterday, I became a man: I had an upper endoscopy.
This entails the passage of a snakelike instrument through the throat, esophagus, stomach and duodenum. Snapshots of the Semitic Digestive Tract (SDT) are taken. A sample of Inflamed Semitic Tissue (IST) is removed, and sent to the lab. Next, the doctor prescribes a medication that, while raising expectations all around, does not actually work.
(I should author a book about my struggle. A memoir. It will be inspiring. My bodily vicissitudes will interest university-educated readers everywhere. It seems to be working for Mara Altman, who has just published an execrable looking thing entitled Thanks for Coming: One Young Woman’s Quest for an Orgasm [Harper Perennial, 2009]. God help us.)
Thursday, May 28, 2009
On Fun; or, America as a Refuge for Asperger Sufferers
Americans do not know how to have Fun. We try. We try aggressively, which rather defeats the point. It’s our Puritan heritage, perhaps. The prospect of Fun fills our collective breast with seldom-acknowledged anxiety. What kind of Fun will it be? What will be necessary for us to attain it? What if the kind of Fun we have differs from the kind of Fun we were expecting to have?
This isn’t to say we’re averse to drinking, casual sex, dancing, music-making, etc. We do these things, but in a grotesque spirit. We drink as if trying to pass an exam on it. I live near the Ohio State University campus. It is allegedly a Party School. But I see precious little that would qualify as festivity. I see only a great sadness…a screaming, thumping, giddy desperation.
The most Fun I have ever seen was at a party I crashed in Eilat, Israel. A large tent (equipped with a wet bar) had been erected on the beach. A live band was hired, though their beamingly good cheer made it seem as though they had volunteered…that they were doing it for their own pleasure. The revelers were Moroccan Jews. Children frolicked in the sand. Women did their gyrations. Uncles got drunk; not heavily drunk, like Americans, but lyrically drunk. The band soon played a traditional ballad. The microphone was passed around, and each guest was invited (with the whooping, yodeling encouragement of all) to sing a verse. And the sun sank below the dusty, citrus-colored hills.
“Good Lord,” I thought wonderingly, enviously. “This is real Fun.” (I know I’m romanticizing “Orientals”, a grave sin against all that is broadminded and postmodern. I offer a two-pronged defense: (1) I don’t make a habit of it; (2) I think the Eilat party justifies it. So anyone who might be offended can go defecate in the ocean, as the Yiddish curse goes. Postmodern spoilsports render Fun an even more elusive goal, because they sap the cultural atmosphere of Fun’s most elemental precondition: Good Faith.)
This brings me to Asperger Syndrome, a topic that has been fascinating me over the past number of weeks. Comrades: as a matter of course, distrust religions founded, or disorders discovered, during your lifetime. But having read some of the literature and grazed through the online support groups, it seems that Asperger Syndrome does indeed exist, and can be quite devastating. It represents a dot (or an indistinct smudge) on the milder extremity of what they call the Autism Spectrum. It’s a sort of social dyslexia, but not only that.
I extrapolate from the literature (or at least the literature I’ve read in my unsystematic way) that those suffering Asperger Syndrome find it extremely difficult to have Fun. There are moments of gentle mirth, silliness or downright ecstasy, to be sure. But that’s not Fun, really. It sounds extremely trying to suffer Asperger Syndrome in a culture like ours, where Fun is so difficult to achieve. How alienating it must be to suffer it where Fun is a routine part of life!
Men worried about their deviant sexual predilections will sometimes enter the priesthood, where everyone’s suppressing something. I wonder if, say, an Italian Asperger sufferer, when he comes to America, experiences similar relief; I wonder if whatever anxieties he had about Fun are somehow soothed. “Finally, a country where no one knows how to experience pleasure! Home at last!”
This isn’t to say we’re averse to drinking, casual sex, dancing, music-making, etc. We do these things, but in a grotesque spirit. We drink as if trying to pass an exam on it. I live near the Ohio State University campus. It is allegedly a Party School. But I see precious little that would qualify as festivity. I see only a great sadness…a screaming, thumping, giddy desperation.
The most Fun I have ever seen was at a party I crashed in Eilat, Israel. A large tent (equipped with a wet bar) had been erected on the beach. A live band was hired, though their beamingly good cheer made it seem as though they had volunteered…that they were doing it for their own pleasure. The revelers were Moroccan Jews. Children frolicked in the sand. Women did their gyrations. Uncles got drunk; not heavily drunk, like Americans, but lyrically drunk. The band soon played a traditional ballad. The microphone was passed around, and each guest was invited (with the whooping, yodeling encouragement of all) to sing a verse. And the sun sank below the dusty, citrus-colored hills.
“Good Lord,” I thought wonderingly, enviously. “This is real Fun.” (I know I’m romanticizing “Orientals”, a grave sin against all that is broadminded and postmodern. I offer a two-pronged defense: (1) I don’t make a habit of it; (2) I think the Eilat party justifies it. So anyone who might be offended can go defecate in the ocean, as the Yiddish curse goes. Postmodern spoilsports render Fun an even more elusive goal, because they sap the cultural atmosphere of Fun’s most elemental precondition: Good Faith.)
This brings me to Asperger Syndrome, a topic that has been fascinating me over the past number of weeks. Comrades: as a matter of course, distrust religions founded, or disorders discovered, during your lifetime. But having read some of the literature and grazed through the online support groups, it seems that Asperger Syndrome does indeed exist, and can be quite devastating. It represents a dot (or an indistinct smudge) on the milder extremity of what they call the Autism Spectrum. It’s a sort of social dyslexia, but not only that.
I extrapolate from the literature (or at least the literature I’ve read in my unsystematic way) that those suffering Asperger Syndrome find it extremely difficult to have Fun. There are moments of gentle mirth, silliness or downright ecstasy, to be sure. But that’s not Fun, really. It sounds extremely trying to suffer Asperger Syndrome in a culture like ours, where Fun is so difficult to achieve. How alienating it must be to suffer it where Fun is a routine part of life!
Men worried about their deviant sexual predilections will sometimes enter the priesthood, where everyone’s suppressing something. I wonder if, say, an Italian Asperger sufferer, when he comes to America, experiences similar relief; I wonder if whatever anxieties he had about Fun are somehow soothed. “Finally, a country where no one knows how to experience pleasure! Home at last!”
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Mea Culpa
As for my previous post, it turns out that to “proclaim” a Month is not the same as to “establish” a Month. Jewish-American Heritage Month was, I now learn, established by George W. Bush.
Nevertheless, my argument’s validity diminishes not a jot.
Nevertheless, my argument’s validity diminishes not a jot.
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