Man Booker winner Howard Jacobson talks about English anti-Semitism, ping-pong, and the seriousness of Jewish jokes
By Howard Jacobson for Tablet Magazine
The British Jewish writer Howard Jacobson’s eleventh
novel, The Finkler Question, was awarded the Man Booker Prize today. On the eve
of the announcement, Jacobson spoke to Tablet Magazine about English
anti-Semitism, Israel “swaggering around,” and why Jews used to be good at
ping-pong. Plus: The first U.S. publication of Jacobson’s 1999 profile of table
tennis champion Marty Reisman.
You described your 2007 novel Kalooki Nights as “the most Jewish novel that has ever been written by anybody anywhere” and we agree—
It certainly uses the word “Jew” more than any other novel.
So what do you mean by that?
I suppose I meant that its preoccupations are unrelievedly Jew talking to Jew thinking about Jew. This was deliberate. That’s what I wanted to write. Jew, Jew, Jew, joke, joke, joke, the world as seen entirely through the eyes of Jews for Jews. There are some Jews who live like that. To a degree, there’s a possibility in every Jew I ever met, for them to live like that. That you ask the question “Why?” and then back you go to the Holocaust and back to the pogroms before that, and everyone wants to know what it is that’s made this particular kind of Jewish morbidity into a positive feature now of the Jewish imagination. So, the book was really about that. Jews thinking about Jews talking about Jews to Jews written by somebody who is a Jew, who is obsessed by the subject, has some crazy obsession, who wants to get to the bottom of this obsession and wonders where this obsession comes from. And will deploy every kind of act of the mind to think about it, including, primarily, what Jews do best, which is make jokes. No one makes jokes like Jews.
So, it’s not only the most Jewish book ever written, it’s got more Jewish jokes in it, good or bad, than any book ever written. Certainly more about Jews and more jokes in it than the Old Testament.
That leads us directly to Shylock. What do you make of him?
Continue reading.
The British Jewish writer Howard Jacobson’s eleventh
novel, The Finkler Question, was awarded the Man Booker Prize today. On the eve
of the announcement, Jacobson spoke to Tablet Magazine about English
anti-Semitism, Israel “swaggering around,” and why Jews used to be good at
ping-pong. Plus: The first U.S. publication of Jacobson’s 1999 profile of table
tennis champion Marty Reisman. You described your 2007 novel Kalooki Nights as “the most Jewish novel that has ever been written by anybody anywhere” and we agree—
It certainly uses the word “Jew” more than any other novel.
So what do you mean by that?
I suppose I meant that its preoccupations are unrelievedly Jew talking to Jew thinking about Jew. This was deliberate. That’s what I wanted to write. Jew, Jew, Jew, joke, joke, joke, the world as seen entirely through the eyes of Jews for Jews. There are some Jews who live like that. To a degree, there’s a possibility in every Jew I ever met, for them to live like that. That you ask the question “Why?” and then back you go to the Holocaust and back to the pogroms before that, and everyone wants to know what it is that’s made this particular kind of Jewish morbidity into a positive feature now of the Jewish imagination. So, the book was really about that. Jews thinking about Jews talking about Jews to Jews written by somebody who is a Jew, who is obsessed by the subject, has some crazy obsession, who wants to get to the bottom of this obsession and wonders where this obsession comes from. And will deploy every kind of act of the mind to think about it, including, primarily, what Jews do best, which is make jokes. No one makes jokes like Jews.
So, it’s not only the most Jewish book ever written, it’s got more Jewish jokes in it, good or bad, than any book ever written. Certainly more about Jews and more jokes in it than the Old Testament.
That leads us directly to Shylock. What do you make of him?
Continue reading.
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