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Kalooki Nights
Max Glickman, a Jewish cartoonist whose seminal work is a comic history titled "Five Thousand Years of Bitterness," recalls his childhood in a British suburb in the 1950s. Growing up, Max is surrounded by Jews, each with an entirely different and outspoken view on what it means to be Jewish. His mother, incessantly preoccupied with a card game called Kalooki, only begrudgingly puts the deck away on the High Holy Days. Max's father, a failed boxer prone to spontaneous nosebleeds, is a self-proclaimed atheist and communist, unable to accept the God who has betrayed him so unequivocally in recent years.But it is through his friend and neighbor Manny Washinsky that Max begins to understand the indelible effects of the Holocaust and to explore the intrinsic and paradoxical questions of a postwar Jewish identity. Manny, obsessed with the Holocaust and haunted by the allure of its legacy, commits a crime of nightmare proportion against his family and his faith. Years later, after his friend's release from prison, Max is inexorably drawn to uncover the motive behind the catastrophic act -- the discovery of which leads to a startling revelation and a profound truth about religion and faith that exists where the sacred meets the profane.
Spanning the decades between World War II and the present day, acclaimed author Howard Jacobson seamlessly weaves together a breath-takingly complex narrative of love, tragedy, redemption, and above all, remarkable humor. Deeply empathetic and audaciously funny, "Kalooki Nights" is a luminous story torn violently between the hope of restoring and rebuilding Jewish life, and the painful burden of memory and loss.
Spanning the decades between World War II and the present day, acclaimed author Howard Jacobson seamlessly weaves together a breath-takingly complex narrative of love, tragedy, redemption, and above all, remarkable humor. Deeply empathetic and audaciously funny, "Kalooki Nights" is a luminous story torn violently between the hope of restoring and rebuilding Jewish life, and the painful burden of memory and loss.
450 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
41 people are currently reading
837 people want to read
About the author
Howard Jacobson
77 books385 followersHoward Jacobson was born in Manchester, England, and educated at Cambridge. His many novels include The Mighty Walzer (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Who’s Sorry Now? and Kalooki Nights (both longlisted for the Man Booker Prize), and, most recently, The Act of Love. Jacobson is also a respected critic and broadcaster, and writes a weekly column for the Independent. He lives in London.
Profile of Howard Jacobson in The New York Times.
“The book's appeal to Jewish readers is obvious, but like all great Jewish art — the paintings of Marc Chagall, the books of Saul Bellow, the films of Woody Allen — it is Jacobson's use of the Jewish experience to explain the greater human one that sets it apart. Who among us is so certain of our identity? Who hasn't been asked, "What's your background" and hesitated, even for a split second, to answer their inquisitor? Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question forces us to ask that of ourselves, and that's why it's a must read, no matter what your background.”—-David Sax, NPR.
Profile of Howard Jacobson in The New York Times.
“The book's appeal to Jewish readers is obvious, but like all great Jewish art — the paintings of Marc Chagall, the books of Saul Bellow, the films of Woody Allen — it is Jacobson's use of the Jewish experience to explain the greater human one that sets it apart. Who among us is so certain of our identity? Who hasn't been asked, "What's your background" and hesitated, even for a split second, to answer their inquisitor? Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question forces us to ask that of ourselves, and that's why it's a must read, no matter what your background.”—-David Sax, NPR.
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December 2, 2020
The Rosenhead Gambit
I had a Jewish colleague during graduate school whose parents had emigrated from Germany to London in the 1930’s. Unsure of the state of anti-Semitism in England at the time, they changed their surname from Rosenkopf to Rosenhead to create what they thought would be ethnic anonymity. Mr. & Mrs. Rosenhead could easily be characters in Kalooki Nights in their move to disguise, but not really, their Jewishness.
Howard Jacobson doesn’t so much create characters as a world in which characters work in a certain way. That world is one of Being Jewish, or as he puts it: Jewishry. It’s a world with the same physics but with different initial conditions than the world within which it exists in parallel. Therefore, it is permanently out of sync. It grates, it irritates. Often it mirrors but it’s never quite comfortable with either itself or the larger world. And despite its relatively small size, Jewishry has a strong claim to being the original and authentic world. This is of course a mixed blessing. No one likes a smart ass neighbour who thinks he knows more than you do, especially when he does know more than you do.
A fundamental conceit of Christianity is a presumed transformation of the soul through baptism, allowing entry into membership of a self-defined chosen people. This is a clear attempt to establish a metaphysical equivalence to Jewishry. We might conclude that, after 2000 years, this attempt has failed, largely because nobody thought the thing through to the longer term: Easy in also means easy out. Christians can annul their Christian being, and do so at an increasing rate, simply by repudiating and walking away from the sacraments.
This is an essential problem created by the somewhat unbiblical Christian doctrine of supercession, that the Church is the real Israel. This doctrine of course relies on large-scale rejection of much of the Hebrew scriptures concerning the destiny of and divine promises to the progeny of Isaac, a task initiated by the Jew, Paul of Tarsus without much real analysis and no foundation in the recorded opinion of Jesus. And doctrine of course is a matter of belief. Belief suspended is special status out the window. But Jews can never opt out, escape being Jewish - neither the world nor their Jewish past will let them (“…there was no refuge from the dead,” Jacobson writes).
Even the rejection by other Jews can’t destroy the fact of being Jewish. The atheistic, unobservant Jewish father of Jacobson’s narrator sets his theme early on: “Jew, Jew, Jew. Why, why, why, as my father asked until the asking killed him, does everything always have to come back to Jew, Jew, Jew?” Why indeed? There are millions of lapsed Catholics, Methodists and even Mormons, not to mention unobservant ex-Hindus, ex-Buddhists, ex-Muslims. But there are no ex-Jews. There are pious, secular and atheist Jews, but they are all Jews, if not recognised as such among Jews then always among Christians who provide a timely reminder in the event of any sort of social tension. No abstruse, wishy-washy, theological claptrap about transformed spiritual states. Jewishry is in the blood, from whence it reaches the soul, not vice-versa.
Christians are simultaneously jealous and scornful of the reality, the physicality of Jewish identity. It threatens and annoys them at the same time that it attracts and confirms them. Without Jews, Christians have no real identity. ‘Without us there is no you’ is not a bad answer to the Christian (or Muslim) who asks the Jew, Jew, Jew question. This gets under Christian skin - like Hillary does Donald, in fact exactly like Hillary does Donald. And then they, the Christians, act badly indeed.
"Goyim do that. They get upset, see red, hit the roof, and take it out on you anally." To be fair, Trump has a Jewish son in law. Perhaps that's reason enough.
Jewishry is not a herd of musk-oxen, acting jointly against the world which periodically tries to exterminate it. “We are psychologically at war with ourselves, that’s what it comes down to. One half of us would destroy the other half if it could…” Jewishry is permanently dialectical: “…that’s what I’m paid for - excoriating my people when I’m not shielding them from harm.” Its inhabitants exemplify what the Calvinist theologian Karl Barth identified as the essential paradox of God revealing himself as he conceals himself: “He was my tree of knowledge but he was also my angel of oblivion…illuminator and expunger. But I suppose that’s what we’re all doing, making people remember what we would wish them to forget.” Like a burlesque fan dancer, Jewishry has its anti-Semitic aficionados who are fascinated by its revelatory concealment and are effectively seduced by it: “Consigned in their Jew-hating to an eternity of Jew.”
Meaning is not stable within Jewishry in which there is an inherent and arbitrary divine nominalism. Names, especially proper names have no fixed denotation but float as if directed by a deity that only is paying attention intermittently. Ilse Cohen, a suburban lady, player of cards, becomes Ilse Koch, the Bitch of Belsen; the more well-known Isadore Demsky is “transmogrified” to Kirk Douglas. Even the meaning of Jewishry is questionable: "To a Jew there is no acceptable way of being Jewish. Every other Jew does it wrong."
But it is perhaps in sexual politics that meaning is most ambiguous. Jewishry is a mysterious world that attracts adventurous women, to whom adventurous Jewish men are attracted for the same reason. At least that’s the story of Jacobson’s Max Glickman who ‘marries out’ four times. Each time mistaking the female intention as well as his own. The symbolism of Jew and Gentile are mutually misconstrued. Max summarises the situation neatly, “When the devil seeks to make trouble in a Jewish family, he does it as a blonde.” Why this should be so is a further enigma which baffled even Sigmund Freud, a Jew who knew more than most about hidden meanings.
Comedy, at least comedy created with the skill of Jacobson, is probably the only effective vehicle for describing the complexity of Jewishry in situ, as it were, the casual passing references to non-events at the intersection of two worlds:
I had a Jewish colleague during graduate school whose parents had emigrated from Germany to London in the 1930’s. Unsure of the state of anti-Semitism in England at the time, they changed their surname from Rosenkopf to Rosenhead to create what they thought would be ethnic anonymity. Mr. & Mrs. Rosenhead could easily be characters in Kalooki Nights in their move to disguise, but not really, their Jewishness.
Howard Jacobson doesn’t so much create characters as a world in which characters work in a certain way. That world is one of Being Jewish, or as he puts it: Jewishry. It’s a world with the same physics but with different initial conditions than the world within which it exists in parallel. Therefore, it is permanently out of sync. It grates, it irritates. Often it mirrors but it’s never quite comfortable with either itself or the larger world. And despite its relatively small size, Jewishry has a strong claim to being the original and authentic world. This is of course a mixed blessing. No one likes a smart ass neighbour who thinks he knows more than you do, especially when he does know more than you do.
A fundamental conceit of Christianity is a presumed transformation of the soul through baptism, allowing entry into membership of a self-defined chosen people. This is a clear attempt to establish a metaphysical equivalence to Jewishry. We might conclude that, after 2000 years, this attempt has failed, largely because nobody thought the thing through to the longer term: Easy in also means easy out. Christians can annul their Christian being, and do so at an increasing rate, simply by repudiating and walking away from the sacraments.
This is an essential problem created by the somewhat unbiblical Christian doctrine of supercession, that the Church is the real Israel. This doctrine of course relies on large-scale rejection of much of the Hebrew scriptures concerning the destiny of and divine promises to the progeny of Isaac, a task initiated by the Jew, Paul of Tarsus without much real analysis and no foundation in the recorded opinion of Jesus. And doctrine of course is a matter of belief. Belief suspended is special status out the window. But Jews can never opt out, escape being Jewish - neither the world nor their Jewish past will let them (“…there was no refuge from the dead,” Jacobson writes).
Even the rejection by other Jews can’t destroy the fact of being Jewish. The atheistic, unobservant Jewish father of Jacobson’s narrator sets his theme early on: “Jew, Jew, Jew. Why, why, why, as my father asked until the asking killed him, does everything always have to come back to Jew, Jew, Jew?” Why indeed? There are millions of lapsed Catholics, Methodists and even Mormons, not to mention unobservant ex-Hindus, ex-Buddhists, ex-Muslims. But there are no ex-Jews. There are pious, secular and atheist Jews, but they are all Jews, if not recognised as such among Jews then always among Christians who provide a timely reminder in the event of any sort of social tension. No abstruse, wishy-washy, theological claptrap about transformed spiritual states. Jewishry is in the blood, from whence it reaches the soul, not vice-versa.
Christians are simultaneously jealous and scornful of the reality, the physicality of Jewish identity. It threatens and annoys them at the same time that it attracts and confirms them. Without Jews, Christians have no real identity. ‘Without us there is no you’ is not a bad answer to the Christian (or Muslim) who asks the Jew, Jew, Jew question. This gets under Christian skin - like Hillary does Donald, in fact exactly like Hillary does Donald. And then they, the Christians, act badly indeed.
"Goyim do that. They get upset, see red, hit the roof, and take it out on you anally." To be fair, Trump has a Jewish son in law. Perhaps that's reason enough.
Jewishry is not a herd of musk-oxen, acting jointly against the world which periodically tries to exterminate it. “We are psychologically at war with ourselves, that’s what it comes down to. One half of us would destroy the other half if it could…” Jewishry is permanently dialectical: “…that’s what I’m paid for - excoriating my people when I’m not shielding them from harm.” Its inhabitants exemplify what the Calvinist theologian Karl Barth identified as the essential paradox of God revealing himself as he conceals himself: “He was my tree of knowledge but he was also my angel of oblivion…illuminator and expunger. But I suppose that’s what we’re all doing, making people remember what we would wish them to forget.” Like a burlesque fan dancer, Jewishry has its anti-Semitic aficionados who are fascinated by its revelatory concealment and are effectively seduced by it: “Consigned in their Jew-hating to an eternity of Jew.”
Meaning is not stable within Jewishry in which there is an inherent and arbitrary divine nominalism. Names, especially proper names have no fixed denotation but float as if directed by a deity that only is paying attention intermittently. Ilse Cohen, a suburban lady, player of cards, becomes Ilse Koch, the Bitch of Belsen; the more well-known Isadore Demsky is “transmogrified” to Kirk Douglas. Even the meaning of Jewishry is questionable: "To a Jew there is no acceptable way of being Jewish. Every other Jew does it wrong."
But it is perhaps in sexual politics that meaning is most ambiguous. Jewishry is a mysterious world that attracts adventurous women, to whom adventurous Jewish men are attracted for the same reason. At least that’s the story of Jacobson’s Max Glickman who ‘marries out’ four times. Each time mistaking the female intention as well as his own. The symbolism of Jew and Gentile are mutually misconstrued. Max summarises the situation neatly, “When the devil seeks to make trouble in a Jewish family, he does it as a blonde.” Why this should be so is a further enigma which baffled even Sigmund Freud, a Jew who knew more than most about hidden meanings.
Comedy, at least comedy created with the skill of Jacobson, is probably the only effective vehicle for describing the complexity of Jewishry in situ, as it were, the casual passing references to non-events at the intersection of two worlds:
“Noseless, it’s possible that I could have got away with being merely Slavic and depressed. Whereas where Asher walked, the whole of the Old Testament walked with him. Seeded like a pomegranate he was with the sorrows and tribulations of his people, but juicy with the wine of pomegranate, too, spicy with spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, his lips like a thread of scarlet. And people notice when you look like that. Especially people from cold countries”Who else could get a laugh out of a joke based on ancient Hebrew poetic tropes? I doubt even Stanley Elkin. In any case, Jacobson is undoubtedly right, "Only mockery keeps you on the right side of idolatry." Perhaps that is what Mr. & Mrs. Rosenhead had in mind after all.
November 25, 2010
Since November first I've busied myself with writing a largely self-indulgent 'novel' in order to 'win' the National Novel Writing Month thing. Winning is just writing fifty thousand words, no one checks to see if those words mean anything when strung together nor does anyone read the words and see if they are words that make a pleasing string when read sequentially. I have finished my fifty something thousand words so now I can return to my former self-indulgent past time of writing reviews where I talk more about myself than the book I'm supposed to be writing about.
I'm sure you were wondering why I wasn't clogging up your goodreads dot com update feed lately and now that you have heard why you can give a sigh of relief. I hope no one feared that I was writing less reviews because I had done something foolish like gotten a life of some kind. Rest assured I haven't done anything foolish like that and once again every time I take a shit I'll treat it like the profound experience it most certainly is and figure out someway to write about it in a review.
Now I have to figure out what book this little introduction should be for. I have fallen pretty far behind in books I haven't reviewed. But I have also not read nearly as many books this past month because of the other writing thing. Christ, I have no idea which of these books to review right now, but whichever one I choose to start blabbing about in the next paragraph will be very relevant to all the crap I've just written.
Kalooki Nights by Howard Jacobson is another of the very Jewey books I've read this fall. Jacobson recently won the Booker Prize for his newest novel, and this book was short-listed for the Booker Prize a few years ago. I was called out by Jasmine for reading this so soon after Jacobson had won this prize, as if I was bandwagon jumping. And maybe I was, but not really. I'd heard awesome things about him before, and I could have sworn that Karen read this a couple of years ago and loved it, but apparently I made that up. Jonathan Saran Wrap Foer blurbed Jacobson on his new book as being as funny a Jewey author as Stanley Elkin; which also made me very interested in reading Jacobson. But I should note I don't care much for Foer, not because I have read him but because I'm the kind of asshole who doesn't like some things without any good reason. I also generally think of Foer's book blurbs about as highly as Stephen King's. It's tough to pick up a book these days (well not really, but I'm also given to exaggeration) without having Foer ejaculating that this author is brilliant or great or something. But to compare someone to Elkin is pretty good, since Elkin isn't someone you would usually go around name dropping if you were trying to sell some books.
And Foer was right.
Jacobson is like Elkin. They are both morbidly funny. And I enjoyed both of them. So I'm guessing that Foer was thinking that they were both morbidly funny and that I would like both of them when he made that comment. Thank you for taking me into account Mr. Foer maybe I've been too hard on you in my head.
This book is maybe the funniest book that I've read that obsesses about the holocaust. It's an angry book but filled with absurd humor, like how many books would use as a joking refrain, Jew Jew Jew is the sound the train Auschwitz makes?
The book's main character is a cartoonist who was part of the first generation to be born after the Holocaust. His family never experienced the horrors of Hitler first hand, they were already assimilated British citizens. The narrators father was a leftist who believed in good lefty things and thought the best thing would be to stop being Jews and be a good socialist instead. His mother's only nod to be Jewish was playing Kalooki, a card game apparently favored by some Jewish people at the time. One of the narrators friends growing up was the son of an Orthodox family. The kind of family that followed shabbos, kept a kosher house, and lived in 'the old ways'
The narrator grows up with the lost feeling of being not completely assimilated, this not so close friend of his being a reminder that the narrator is Jewish, but also a symbol of shame for the narrator who finds his friend's family an embarrassment.
The friend grows up and gases his parents while they sleep.
The narrator is hired by a film producer to get the childhood friend to give his story, tell why he gassed his parents; Belsen-style.
Did you just notice how much plot summation I just did? That was almost like a book report. Cool, eh?
The book is really funny, as I'm sure you can tell by bit of plot I talked about. But seriously, it is funny but it's also a dark meditation on identity, and the past and the present, and about how does one go on going on with the historical shadows of Drachau looming overhead, and the promise that freedom is achieved only by hard work and a quick jump in the special showers.
One of the questions that looms in this book is, can religion just be walked away from. How much of what makes someone what they are is in some kind of historico-genetic memory (I'm talking out of my ass here, just go with it). This is kind of a similar theme that gets covered in the work of Philip Roth the conflict between assimilation and tradition, what does diaspora mean.
I was going to write some more but it was going to be about myself too much, and I am just not the kind of reviewer who would write about themselves to an embarrassing degree.
I'm sure you were wondering why I wasn't clogging up your goodreads dot com update feed lately and now that you have heard why you can give a sigh of relief. I hope no one feared that I was writing less reviews because I had done something foolish like gotten a life of some kind. Rest assured I haven't done anything foolish like that and once again every time I take a shit I'll treat it like the profound experience it most certainly is and figure out someway to write about it in a review.
Now I have to figure out what book this little introduction should be for. I have fallen pretty far behind in books I haven't reviewed. But I have also not read nearly as many books this past month because of the other writing thing. Christ, I have no idea which of these books to review right now, but whichever one I choose to start blabbing about in the next paragraph will be very relevant to all the crap I've just written.
Kalooki Nights by Howard Jacobson is another of the very Jewey books I've read this fall. Jacobson recently won the Booker Prize for his newest novel, and this book was short-listed for the Booker Prize a few years ago. I was called out by Jasmine for reading this so soon after Jacobson had won this prize, as if I was bandwagon jumping. And maybe I was, but not really. I'd heard awesome things about him before, and I could have sworn that Karen read this a couple of years ago and loved it, but apparently I made that up. Jonathan Saran Wrap Foer blurbed Jacobson on his new book as being as funny a Jewey author as Stanley Elkin; which also made me very interested in reading Jacobson. But I should note I don't care much for Foer, not because I have read him but because I'm the kind of asshole who doesn't like some things without any good reason. I also generally think of Foer's book blurbs about as highly as Stephen King's. It's tough to pick up a book these days (well not really, but I'm also given to exaggeration) without having Foer ejaculating that this author is brilliant or great or something. But to compare someone to Elkin is pretty good, since Elkin isn't someone you would usually go around name dropping if you were trying to sell some books.
And Foer was right.
Jacobson is like Elkin. They are both morbidly funny. And I enjoyed both of them. So I'm guessing that Foer was thinking that they were both morbidly funny and that I would like both of them when he made that comment. Thank you for taking me into account Mr. Foer maybe I've been too hard on you in my head.
This book is maybe the funniest book that I've read that obsesses about the holocaust. It's an angry book but filled with absurd humor, like how many books would use as a joking refrain, Jew Jew Jew is the sound the train Auschwitz makes?
The book's main character is a cartoonist who was part of the first generation to be born after the Holocaust. His family never experienced the horrors of Hitler first hand, they were already assimilated British citizens. The narrators father was a leftist who believed in good lefty things and thought the best thing would be to stop being Jews and be a good socialist instead. His mother's only nod to be Jewish was playing Kalooki, a card game apparently favored by some Jewish people at the time. One of the narrators friends growing up was the son of an Orthodox family. The kind of family that followed shabbos, kept a kosher house, and lived in 'the old ways'
The narrator grows up with the lost feeling of being not completely assimilated, this not so close friend of his being a reminder that the narrator is Jewish, but also a symbol of shame for the narrator who finds his friend's family an embarrassment.
The friend grows up and gases his parents while they sleep.
The narrator is hired by a film producer to get the childhood friend to give his story, tell why he gassed his parents; Belsen-style.
Did you just notice how much plot summation I just did? That was almost like a book report. Cool, eh?
The book is really funny, as I'm sure you can tell by bit of plot I talked about. But seriously, it is funny but it's also a dark meditation on identity, and the past and the present, and about how does one go on going on with the historical shadows of Drachau looming overhead, and the promise that freedom is achieved only by hard work and a quick jump in the special showers.
One of the questions that looms in this book is, can religion just be walked away from. How much of what makes someone what they are is in some kind of historico-genetic memory (I'm talking out of my ass here, just go with it). This is kind of a similar theme that gets covered in the work of Philip Roth the conflict between assimilation and tradition, what does diaspora mean.
I was going to write some more but it was going to be about myself too much, and I am just not the kind of reviewer who would write about themselves to an embarrassing degree.
December 3, 2020
Kalooki Nights
In 2007, I received this book as a birthday gift from a sweet friend and colleague who knew I loved to read. I didn't like the book but still remember and am grateful for her thoughtfulness.
"Kalooki Nights" by the English novelist Howard Jacobson tells a story of an English Jewish community in Manchester, England in the years following WW II. The chief protagonist is the narrator, Max Glickman, a cartoonist who has had three wives, two non-Jewish and anti-Semitic, and one Jewish, who also endeavors to loosen Judaism's hold on Max. Max's father was an aspiring boxer who became an atheist and tries to give both Max and his other child, his daughter Shani, a secular life. Shani marries a non-Jewish man in what proves to be a successful relationship. Max's mother is an inveterate player of a card game called Kalooki, with a group of other Jewish women.
The book recounts Max's relationship with his childhood friend Manny Washinsky. Unlike Max, Manny was raised in an orthodox household. Manny teaches Max about the horrors of the Holocaust. When Max's older brother becomes romantically involved with a non-Jewish woman and the parents do everything in their power to terminate the relationship, Max ultimately gasses them to death in their bed and spends many years in prison. Years later, Max and Manny meet again, when an anti-Semitic television producer hires Max to do research on a story about Manny.
In many ways, this book is a cross between "Portnoy's Complaint" and other early books by Philip Roth and "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", the story of two American Jewish cartoonists, by Michael Chabon. The book has as some of its themes the tension between secularism and traditional religiosity as options for modern Jews, the Holocaust and its impact on Jewish life and belief, and the relationship between Jews and non-Jews, particularly as the relationships involve sexuality and intimacy.
The book is funny in many places and insightful in some. But it is told in a blustery, wandering, and diffuse style which make it difficult to follow. The language is wordy, profane, and satirical -- probably in an attempt to create some artistic distance between the author and the events which he describes -- but much of the book I found painful. The characters, Jewish and non-Jewish, are full of bigotry for each other and hatred for themselves. Sexual themes play a large role in the book, as the Jewish men are embittered towards Jewish women -- thinking that the women will not become involved in a sexual relationship with them -- and the non-Jewish women are drawn to what they think they perceive of Jewish men. This is a story that has been told before, and it is drummed in unmercifully in this novel.
Some of this story has a context broader than the ambiguous situation that, for the author, many Jewish people find themselves in or create for themselves. The author deals implicitly with the need of people to find spirituality for themselves without the extremes of total secularism on the one hand on routinized fundamentalism or orthodoxy on the other hand. But the self-pitying, solipsistic outlook of most of the characters of the book, together with its windy, unorganized character, make this novel a chore to read and largely unsuccessful.
Robin Friedman
In 2007, I received this book as a birthday gift from a sweet friend and colleague who knew I loved to read. I didn't like the book but still remember and am grateful for her thoughtfulness.
"Kalooki Nights" by the English novelist Howard Jacobson tells a story of an English Jewish community in Manchester, England in the years following WW II. The chief protagonist is the narrator, Max Glickman, a cartoonist who has had three wives, two non-Jewish and anti-Semitic, and one Jewish, who also endeavors to loosen Judaism's hold on Max. Max's father was an aspiring boxer who became an atheist and tries to give both Max and his other child, his daughter Shani, a secular life. Shani marries a non-Jewish man in what proves to be a successful relationship. Max's mother is an inveterate player of a card game called Kalooki, with a group of other Jewish women.
The book recounts Max's relationship with his childhood friend Manny Washinsky. Unlike Max, Manny was raised in an orthodox household. Manny teaches Max about the horrors of the Holocaust. When Max's older brother becomes romantically involved with a non-Jewish woman and the parents do everything in their power to terminate the relationship, Max ultimately gasses them to death in their bed and spends many years in prison. Years later, Max and Manny meet again, when an anti-Semitic television producer hires Max to do research on a story about Manny.
In many ways, this book is a cross between "Portnoy's Complaint" and other early books by Philip Roth and "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", the story of two American Jewish cartoonists, by Michael Chabon. The book has as some of its themes the tension between secularism and traditional religiosity as options for modern Jews, the Holocaust and its impact on Jewish life and belief, and the relationship between Jews and non-Jews, particularly as the relationships involve sexuality and intimacy.
The book is funny in many places and insightful in some. But it is told in a blustery, wandering, and diffuse style which make it difficult to follow. The language is wordy, profane, and satirical -- probably in an attempt to create some artistic distance between the author and the events which he describes -- but much of the book I found painful. The characters, Jewish and non-Jewish, are full of bigotry for each other and hatred for themselves. Sexual themes play a large role in the book, as the Jewish men are embittered towards Jewish women -- thinking that the women will not become involved in a sexual relationship with them -- and the non-Jewish women are drawn to what they think they perceive of Jewish men. This is a story that has been told before, and it is drummed in unmercifully in this novel.
Some of this story has a context broader than the ambiguous situation that, for the author, many Jewish people find themselves in or create for themselves. The author deals implicitly with the need of people to find spirituality for themselves without the extremes of total secularism on the one hand on routinized fundamentalism or orthodoxy on the other hand. But the self-pitying, solipsistic outlook of most of the characters of the book, together with its windy, unorganized character, make this novel a chore to read and largely unsuccessful.
Robin Friedman
April 4, 2012
Kalooki Nights is the funniest Holocaust themed book I've ever read. I started out with four stars and the more I thought, the more I became convinced that this is an almost perfect book that will stay with me forever. Jacobson, the self-described love child of Jane Austen and Philip Roth, brings his Jewish and British humor to the story of Max Glickman, a Jewish cartoonist in England who publishes graphic novels like "5000 Years of Bitterness" and "No Bloody Wonder." The cast of characters is wonderfully cartoon-ish and human at the same time. Jacobson's humor takes you deeper and feels more human than would ever be possible in a serious approach.
I'm loathe to review books as a simple plot regurgitation. The book reverberates and resonates within itself, using humor to amplify and expound on the issue of suffering. In the end, the big questions of religion, race, sex, love, family, death, forgiveness and genocide are all raised and thrown back into the reader's lap, as I realized everyone's life ultimately ends, so the decision to live in a comedy or a tragedy is up to the person living it. Books like Kalooki Nights make it much easier to live as a comedy.
I'm loathe to review books as a simple plot regurgitation. The book reverberates and resonates within itself, using humor to amplify and expound on the issue of suffering. In the end, the big questions of religion, race, sex, love, family, death, forgiveness and genocide are all raised and thrown back into the reader's lap, as I realized everyone's life ultimately ends, so the decision to live in a comedy or a tragedy is up to the person living it. Books like Kalooki Nights make it much easier to live as a comedy.
February 12, 2021
Boring. Repetitive. A good short story expanded beyond tolerance.
Read
April 24, 2009Jacobson's long meditation on post-holocaust Jewish identity.
I enjoyed the book's disarming approach to describing the intergenerational transformations of collective guilt and memory. Summarized in the way that the narrator, Max, is often thinking back to his uncle's refrain of "and for this the Nazis tried to exterminate us" while also remembering his father's response: "Since when did any Nazi try to exterminate you, Ike [Max's uncle:]? You personally?" Throughout the book, the narrator attempts to determine—as a Jew born after 1946—what the holocaust means in his life. He questions what mixture of reverence, guilt, and indignation will allow you to carry the burden forward in time without being consumed by the responsibility. Essentially, how does one properly remember and also look forward? And how does one differentiate "looking forward" from being simply the opposite of looking back?
I'm making the book sound deep and serious—and it is—but that sort of sketch doesn't do Jacobson's writing full justice. In addition to his many other skills, he's tremendously funny. I laughed a lot while reading this book. However, as I hope the above quotation from the book might show, as a gentile, I wasn't sure how much I should be laughing and, at some points, if I should be laughing at all (but I admit, I laughed anyway). Great book.
I enjoyed the book's disarming approach to describing the intergenerational transformations of collective guilt and memory. Summarized in the way that the narrator, Max, is often thinking back to his uncle's refrain of "and for this the Nazis tried to exterminate us" while also remembering his father's response: "Since when did any Nazi try to exterminate you, Ike [Max's uncle:]? You personally?" Throughout the book, the narrator attempts to determine—as a Jew born after 1946—what the holocaust means in his life. He questions what mixture of reverence, guilt, and indignation will allow you to carry the burden forward in time without being consumed by the responsibility. Essentially, how does one properly remember and also look forward? And how does one differentiate "looking forward" from being simply the opposite of looking back?
I'm making the book sound deep and serious—and it is—but that sort of sketch doesn't do Jacobson's writing full justice. In addition to his many other skills, he's tremendously funny. I laughed a lot while reading this book. However, as I hope the above quotation from the book might show, as a gentile, I wasn't sure how much I should be laughing and, at some points, if I should be laughing at all (but I admit, I laughed anyway). Great book.
April 30, 2012
Excellent book! First I have read by Jacobson but it certainly won’t be the last.
The book runs in a very long narrative that crosses between past, present and future throughout and the main character Maxie grapples with ideas of what it is to be Jewish and equally of what it is to be human.
Jacobson obviously deals with the subject matter well and concepts of secular and Orthodox societies, intermarriage between faiths, Holocaust (and Holocaust denial) and some issues of the Israel question are lightly questioned by characters in the book. On top of this, Jacobson also tackles society at large and readers find themselves questioning what it is to be British or Jewish British accordingly. Through multi-‘Yiddish-isms’ one is also transported through language from an older world to a newer one where the same rules often apply.
After reading the book, one cannot question the intelligence of Jacobson as a writer. He is particularly skilled at being able to tackle serious subjects with varying degrees of wit, humour, sarcasm and often that sensitive ‘so-near the knuckle’ kind of excruciating questioning of material in search of his quest for the character’s truth. His writing and characterisation are flawless and it’s easy to gain perspective and stance throughout the novel. One gains a quick empathy into the role of Maxie who is dogged and paranoid by his Jewishness. Maybe by the end of the novel, however, he has a greater appreciation for his own culture, history and future.
I’ve read a lot of books by Philip Roth (one of my favourite American/Jewish novelists) and I can utterly understand the favourable comparisons being made that Jacobson stands as a British Roth. That said, there is a context in Jacobson that I haven’t found and will never find in Roth which is maybe that intelligent and biting sense of unique Northern British (Lancastrian/Mancunian British mixed with Yiddish) humour that underpins each characterisation and page to read.
I really can’t fault this novel – it entertained me and made me think to similar high degrees. Astonishingly good stuff – would recommend without reservation to any lover of genius fiction! Roth fans should, of course, try it to gain the British equivalent.
The book runs in a very long narrative that crosses between past, present and future throughout and the main character Maxie grapples with ideas of what it is to be Jewish and equally of what it is to be human.
Jacobson obviously deals with the subject matter well and concepts of secular and Orthodox societies, intermarriage between faiths, Holocaust (and Holocaust denial) and some issues of the Israel question are lightly questioned by characters in the book. On top of this, Jacobson also tackles society at large and readers find themselves questioning what it is to be British or Jewish British accordingly. Through multi-‘Yiddish-isms’ one is also transported through language from an older world to a newer one where the same rules often apply.
After reading the book, one cannot question the intelligence of Jacobson as a writer. He is particularly skilled at being able to tackle serious subjects with varying degrees of wit, humour, sarcasm and often that sensitive ‘so-near the knuckle’ kind of excruciating questioning of material in search of his quest for the character’s truth. His writing and characterisation are flawless and it’s easy to gain perspective and stance throughout the novel. One gains a quick empathy into the role of Maxie who is dogged and paranoid by his Jewishness. Maybe by the end of the novel, however, he has a greater appreciation for his own culture, history and future.
I’ve read a lot of books by Philip Roth (one of my favourite American/Jewish novelists) and I can utterly understand the favourable comparisons being made that Jacobson stands as a British Roth. That said, there is a context in Jacobson that I haven’t found and will never find in Roth which is maybe that intelligent and biting sense of unique Northern British (Lancastrian/Mancunian British mixed with Yiddish) humour that underpins each characterisation and page to read.
I really can’t fault this novel – it entertained me and made me think to similar high degrees. Astonishingly good stuff – would recommend without reservation to any lover of genius fiction! Roth fans should, of course, try it to gain the British equivalent.
November 25, 2010
After reading the not very positive New Yorker review of Howard Jacobson, I listened to the audiobook of Kalooki Nights. Did the reviewer actually read this book or just thumb through the beginning? I wouldn't say it is funny, ha-ha funny. It's funny in that sad sense of the surreal attempt to come to terms with the aftermath of the Holocaust. As an American Jew in the vanguard of the post-war baby boom (b. 1946) I had been disturbed by the unaswerable questions to my parents about how could they have not known what was going on, how could they have just let all this happen. Kalooki Nights shares my bewilderment and Jacobsen's characters act out in their own idiosyncratic ways how a Jew and/or Germans live with the horror. Kalooki Nights could be subtitled with Max Glickman's opus title--Five Thousand Years of Bitterness. Jacobson's humor is of the ironic. Jacobson is Glickman like Roth is Zuckerman. Speaking through a cartoonist allows him to view life with this irony and look for the absurd. About the audiobook, I know British English varies from American English in pronunciation, but does British Hebrew also vary? But then I have noticed that many audiobooks are often incorrect with regard to proper pronunciation in general. Just wondered if there were any other audiobook listeners of this one who might know.
January 12, 2011
This book is not for everybody as its humor is dark. Like other Jacobson books this one explores being Jewish in a non-Jewish world. Jacobson's obvious influences are Philip Roth and Mordecai Richler but he is different from either of them, perhaps because he is British. I recommend it to those of any ethnicity or religion who can laugh at the darkness we find within. For example anyone who read "Bonfires of the Vanities" and did not get that it is a very funny book should probably stay away from this one. Taking "Kalooki Nights" too seriously might be distressing. BTW Kalooki is a form of rummy that is very popular with Jews, including my mother's family.
December 11, 2010
$ 1/2, actually, tho I hesitate to round up. Very interesting mordant story about a british guy who grows up in an orthodox jewish family, in London. Jacobson won the Booker, and all NPR could ask him was silly questions about what it is like to be Jewish in the UK. I guess you would have to read the book to find out. "Kalooki" is a card game favored by the narrator's mother--into which she dives upon the death of his raving athiest father, 2/3 of the way through the book. This is after a long foreboding subplot about the serial killer also from the 'hood, the religio-miscegenation between orthodox jews and germans, the narrator's afflicted love for women only with umlauts and diareses in their names (including, at the end, one jewish woman). But for the soft line on zionism (which seemed to dissipate all the other subplots of shtetl english/yiddish, and dwellings on 'wound culture,' and being the best self-lacerater (?) that time can buy. Lots of good dialogue, and I hope I never hear of him as the Philip Roth of England.
March 16, 2025
Very droll account of the cartoonist Max leaving behind the Jewish Manchester of his childhood and revisiting the chip on his shoulder and their childhood holocaust obsessions when he meets up with school friend and murderer Manny. Took a while for me to get into, but worth the perseverance and I couldn't put it down once I got going. Even the most caricatured people in the book are instantly recognisable.
June 29, 2007
THIS GUY IS SO UNDER APPRECIATED IN THE U.S.! He's what Philip Roth wishes he could be--some of the sharpest comic writing about the workingclass Jewish experience--though in this case in England, in a Manchester neighborhood. Run, don't walk to read this book. I'm making it my mission to get people to read it...
December 31, 2015
This is a sharp and clever exploration of identity, love and family. The humour fades as the book goes on, but books that are funny throughout are very rare, so that can be forgiven.
The vibrant, crisp prose and the hilarious characterisation are the two best features of the book. It's not as good as The Finkler Question, but it's a great read in a similar vein.
The vibrant, crisp prose and the hilarious characterisation are the two best features of the book. It's not as good as The Finkler Question, but it's a great read in a similar vein.
January 8, 2023
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«Mi meraviglia» dissi «che tu non ci abbia maledetto tutti per averti rovinato la vita».
«La mia vita?». Sembrava stupita che potessi pensare una cosa del genere. «La mia è stata una vita come tante. È la vostra a essere rovinata».
==========
Perché ogni giorno mi sveglio come se fossi a lutto? Per chi o per cosa porto il lutto?
==========
Non diciamo "Ricorda di non uccidere". Perché dimenticarsene non rappresenterebbe una scusa. "Ricordati del giorno del sabbath" sembra più un colpetto di gomito che un vero comandamento».
==========
L'immagine in movimento mi lascia del tutto indifferente, qualunque siano le sue dimensioni. Troppo naturalistica. E mai abbastanza divertente o disperata. O comunque, mai entrambe le cose insieme, come invece piace a me. Malgrado il mio disinteresse verso quel mezzo, però, sembrava che io ne conoscessi sempre gli animatori. «Non guardarla allora» è la risposta che si riceve in genere quando ci si lamenta della televisione. Ma il problema non è tanto guardarla, quanto venire a sapere di persone la cui esistenza, tutto sommato, sarebbe preferibile ignorare.
==========
Che io sia divenuto un vignettista, piuttosto che una di quelle più ingenue creature che sono gli illustratori di fumetti, e tanto meno un contabile o un dentista, dimostra soltanto che non sempre seguiamo i nostri impulsi migliori, o, più semplicemente, non sempre conosciamo i nostri impulsi. Ricordo che mia madre mi raccontava con orrore di una sua amica caduta vittima, all'improvviso, di una specie di malattia fantascientifica nota ai dottori sempre che gli fosse nota con il nome di sindrome della mano anarchica (o aliena). La povera donna aveva avuto un colpo apoplettico, in seguito al quale l'emisfero destro del cervello le si era sconnesso dal sinistro, cosicché la mano destra era entrata in profondo conflitto con il resto del corpo. A volte la mano ribelle aveva solamente voglia di afferrare qualcosa che lei non voleva afferrare: una porta, una maniglia, un oggetto al supermercato; altre invece cercava attivamente di intralciarla e di ostacolarla, e una notte la donna si svegliò sentendosi soffocare, perché per poco la mano non riusciva a strangolarla. La nostra psiche è dilaniata da una guerra intestina, ecco come stanno le cose. Una metà di noi stessi distruggerebbe l'altra metà se potesse, e soltanto l'imparziale intercessione del corpo, quando è tutto in regola, ci salva dall'ucciderci - è il caso di dirlo - con le nostre mani. Ma non appena interviene qualcosa a sconvolgere l'equilibrio dell'organismo, ci ritroviamo in balia della faida tra i nostri impulsi psichici. Con la mia mano di illustratore era lo stesso. Anche se ancora non aveva tentato di strozzarmi o di cavarmi gli occhi – e non è detto che un giorno non ci provi senza dubbio agiva indipendentemente dalla mia volontà, ostinandosi a voler fare della satira, nel più totale dispregio della mia natura, che era piuttosto pensosa e introversa, refrattaria al riso e all'esagerazione, e nient'affatto portata alla cruda e spesso crudele ilarità della caricatura.
==========
Guardavamo con indulgenza a queste infatuazioni per la fede, fintantoché erano passeggere. Era perfettamente sensato, quando si trattava di avvenimenti importanti - nascita, matrimonio, morte - credere un po'. Ma credere molto era tutt'altra cosa, e solo un pazzo poteva farlo.
Di qui la convinzione dell'intrinseca follia della religione nella quale sono stato allevato.
==========
…ma per quanto mi riguarda non riuscivo a scacciare una fastidiosa sensazione di estraneità: lo conoscevo talmente poco, il suo odore mi risultava sconosciuto, addirittura sgradevole, e quella vicinanza mi metteva terribilmente a disagio, come se persino il corpo a corpo rappresentasse una trasgressione alle regole familiari. Ero turbato, in parte per me stesso, per il fatto che mio padre mi fosse a tal punto estraneo; e in parte per lui, perché si ritrovava un figlio incapace di rilassarsi e di godersi un po' di sana attività sportiva in sua compagnia, da uomo a uomo; in più, ero triste, perché avrei giurato che lui non stava affatto bene. Niente che avesse detto. Niente nel suo modo di respirare o di tenersi in piedi, o nel modo in cui mi teneva stretto. Però emanava qualcosa, quel qualcosa che a volte capita di sentire nei vecchi cani: una stanchezza penetrata fin dentro le ossa, una delusione che va al di là della malinconia, la delusione di chi si è infine rassegnato all'idea che non vivrà mai la vita che aveva sempre sognato. Insomma, un venir meno dell'interesse per ciò che ti circonda, per i tuoi amici, e per te stesso.
==========
Quindi non ha senso chiedersi se di fronte alla stessa tentazione si sarebbe comportato in maniera diversa: quella tentazione a Manny non sarebbe mai venuta. E il carattere di una persona non è determinato soltanto dai princìpi che le vengono trasmessi, ma anche dalle tentazioni che tende ad attirare su di sé.
Colpevole, spaventato, con i nervi a fior di pelle, ma addolcito dalla dolcezza che ispirava negli altri, il che è come dire innamorato di se stesso perché lo amavano gli altri, probabilmente Asher non si era mai sentito così febbrilmente vivo.
==========
Lei lo guardò. Ad Asher parve che nei suoi occhi ci fosse dell'odio, o almeno così disse a Manny. «Beh, non posso. Se lei non vuole vederti, allora tanto meglio. La dimenticherai. Sei solo un bambino. Alla tua età i sentimenti non sono così profondi».
Detto ciò, e dopo aver raccontato le buone nuove al marito, il suo odio nei confronti del figlio si trasformò di nuovo in amore.
Ma si sbagliava su parecchi punti. Non fu affatto meglio. All'età di Asher i sentimenti sono molto profondi. E lui non la dimenticò.
==========
Più passano gli anni, più capisco per quale ragione Tsedraiter Ike ripetesse sempre la sua canzone. «Sono soltanto io, dai paesi di là dal mare, Barnacle il marinaio». Sono soltanto io. Una frase che anche mia madre aveva cominciato a impiegare quando mi telefonava. Soltanto io. Nessuno che sia degno di stima.
==========
Lei desidera discorrere d'arte con lui. È confusa per ciò che le ha detto sulla caricatura. Mendel le ha detto che l'arte non consiste in una semplice riproduzione di ciò che non appartiene al suo territorio. Che l'artista ricrea sempre l'oggetto della sua visione, e in tal modo fa apparire qualcosa che prima non c'era. Disegnare una caricatura, però, vuol dire riconoscere una dipendenza da qualcosa di precedente all'opera, se non addirittura evocare quel qualcosa, perché solo richiamando l'originale il caricaturista può far sì che gli altri si accorgano della sua esagerazione. In questo senso, il caricaturista è l'artista che meno somiglia a Dio, quello meno originale. Ma poiché egli è per natura un artista satirico, e la principale spinta alla satira è il diniego della realtà, allora è anche quello che maggiormente somiglia a Dio.
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Ho bisogno di credere che continuano a pensare a me. Non pretendo che provino un sentimento di nostalgia, ma che almeno mi considerino unico. Solo in questo modo esisto in quanto uomo. Non nella carne, come una donna, che vive nei figli, nella casa che si è fatta, nei risultati tangibili della sua devozione. No, l'uomo è una creatura più spirituale. L'uomo vive nella percezione affettiva che la donna ha di lui e che si porta dietro. E quando la donna rivela questo omuncolo affettivo all'uomo del quale è un'idealizzazione, quell'uomo riesce a stento a contenere la sua felicità.
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«Ogni uomo uccide le cose che ama» disse, quando sollevai lo sguardo su di lui. «Il vigliacco lo fa con un bacio. L'uomo valoroso con una spada. Ma talvolta anche il vigliacco lo fa con la spada».
Mi augurò la buonanotte e si ritirò un'altra volta.
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I matti ci sanno fare con i bambini, questa era una cosa che avevo già notato in precedenza. Forse i bambini sono della taglia giusta. Forse non si accorgono delle loro stranezze. Non intendo spingermi al punto di affermare che hanno in comune con i pazzi delle doti visionarie. Però sembravano trovarsi a loro agio con lui come lo sarebbero stati con qualunque altro bambino. Al punto che mi ritrovai a chiedermi se per caso Manny non possedesse un talento speciale per fare il padre, un dono che, tragicamente, non aveva mai trovato l'opportunità di esercitare. E dire che doveva confrontarsi con dei termini di paragone insolitamente buoni.
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Fu dura cercare di spiegargli, senza urtare i suoi sentimenti di ebreo onorario, che a un funerale ebraico, come regola generale, non si fa grande sfoggio di fiori, e comunque non li si mette mai sulla bara. I fiori ai funerali erano troppo banali e vistosi. La parola MAMMA composta da rose rosa era impensabile per un ebreo. Quella PAPÀ fatta di gerani rossi altrettanto. La norma era la semplicità. Un'austera semplicità di fronte alla grande democrazia della morte. Se si iniziano a mettere fiori sulla bara, immediatamente il ricco verrà sepolto nello sfarzo e il povero nella miseria.
«È una religione veramente bella» disse Mick. Non era in grado di trattenere le lacrime.
==========
«Mi meraviglia» dissi «che tu non ci abbia maledetto tutti per averti rovinato la vita».
«La mia vita?». Sembrava stupita che potessi pensare una cosa del genere. «La mia è stata una vita come tante. È la vostra a essere rovinata».
==========
Perché ogni giorno mi sveglio come se fossi a lutto? Per chi o per cosa porto il lutto?
==========
Non diciamo "Ricorda di non uccidere". Perché dimenticarsene non rappresenterebbe una scusa. "Ricordati del giorno del sabbath" sembra più un colpetto di gomito che un vero comandamento».
==========
L'immagine in movimento mi lascia del tutto indifferente, qualunque siano le sue dimensioni. Troppo naturalistica. E mai abbastanza divertente o disperata. O comunque, mai entrambe le cose insieme, come invece piace a me. Malgrado il mio disinteresse verso quel mezzo, però, sembrava che io ne conoscessi sempre gli animatori. «Non guardarla allora» è la risposta che si riceve in genere quando ci si lamenta della televisione. Ma il problema non è tanto guardarla, quanto venire a sapere di persone la cui esistenza, tutto sommato, sarebbe preferibile ignorare.
==========
Che io sia divenuto un vignettista, piuttosto che una di quelle più ingenue creature che sono gli illustratori di fumetti, e tanto meno un contabile o un dentista, dimostra soltanto che non sempre seguiamo i nostri impulsi migliori, o, più semplicemente, non sempre conosciamo i nostri impulsi. Ricordo che mia madre mi raccontava con orrore di una sua amica caduta vittima, all'improvviso, di una specie di malattia fantascientifica nota ai dottori sempre che gli fosse nota con il nome di sindrome della mano anarchica (o aliena). La povera donna aveva avuto un colpo apoplettico, in seguito al quale l'emisfero destro del cervello le si era sconnesso dal sinistro, cosicché la mano destra era entrata in profondo conflitto con il resto del corpo. A volte la mano ribelle aveva solamente voglia di afferrare qualcosa che lei non voleva afferrare: una porta, una maniglia, un oggetto al supermercato; altre invece cercava attivamente di intralciarla e di ostacolarla, e una notte la donna si svegliò sentendosi soffocare, perché per poco la mano non riusciva a strangolarla. La nostra psiche è dilaniata da una guerra intestina, ecco come stanno le cose. Una metà di noi stessi distruggerebbe l'altra metà se potesse, e soltanto l'imparziale intercessione del corpo, quando è tutto in regola, ci salva dall'ucciderci - è il caso di dirlo - con le nostre mani. Ma non appena interviene qualcosa a sconvolgere l'equilibrio dell'organismo, ci ritroviamo in balia della faida tra i nostri impulsi psichici. Con la mia mano di illustratore era lo stesso. Anche se ancora non aveva tentato di strozzarmi o di cavarmi gli occhi – e non è detto che un giorno non ci provi senza dubbio agiva indipendentemente dalla mia volontà, ostinandosi a voler fare della satira, nel più totale dispregio della mia natura, che era piuttosto pensosa e introversa, refrattaria al riso e all'esagerazione, e nient'affatto portata alla cruda e spesso crudele ilarità della caricatura.
==========
Guardavamo con indulgenza a queste infatuazioni per la fede, fintantoché erano passeggere. Era perfettamente sensato, quando si trattava di avvenimenti importanti - nascita, matrimonio, morte - credere un po'. Ma credere molto era tutt'altra cosa, e solo un pazzo poteva farlo.
Di qui la convinzione dell'intrinseca follia della religione nella quale sono stato allevato.
==========
…ma per quanto mi riguarda non riuscivo a scacciare una fastidiosa sensazione di estraneità: lo conoscevo talmente poco, il suo odore mi risultava sconosciuto, addirittura sgradevole, e quella vicinanza mi metteva terribilmente a disagio, come se persino il corpo a corpo rappresentasse una trasgressione alle regole familiari. Ero turbato, in parte per me stesso, per il fatto che mio padre mi fosse a tal punto estraneo; e in parte per lui, perché si ritrovava un figlio incapace di rilassarsi e di godersi un po' di sana attività sportiva in sua compagnia, da uomo a uomo; in più, ero triste, perché avrei giurato che lui non stava affatto bene. Niente che avesse detto. Niente nel suo modo di respirare o di tenersi in piedi, o nel modo in cui mi teneva stretto. Però emanava qualcosa, quel qualcosa che a volte capita di sentire nei vecchi cani: una stanchezza penetrata fin dentro le ossa, una delusione che va al di là della malinconia, la delusione di chi si è infine rassegnato all'idea che non vivrà mai la vita che aveva sempre sognato. Insomma, un venir meno dell'interesse per ciò che ti circonda, per i tuoi amici, e per te stesso.
==========
Quindi non ha senso chiedersi se di fronte alla stessa tentazione si sarebbe comportato in maniera diversa: quella tentazione a Manny non sarebbe mai venuta. E il carattere di una persona non è determinato soltanto dai princìpi che le vengono trasmessi, ma anche dalle tentazioni che tende ad attirare su di sé.
Colpevole, spaventato, con i nervi a fior di pelle, ma addolcito dalla dolcezza che ispirava negli altri, il che è come dire innamorato di se stesso perché lo amavano gli altri, probabilmente Asher non si era mai sentito così febbrilmente vivo.
==========
Lei lo guardò. Ad Asher parve che nei suoi occhi ci fosse dell'odio, o almeno così disse a Manny. «Beh, non posso. Se lei non vuole vederti, allora tanto meglio. La dimenticherai. Sei solo un bambino. Alla tua età i sentimenti non sono così profondi».
Detto ciò, e dopo aver raccontato le buone nuove al marito, il suo odio nei confronti del figlio si trasformò di nuovo in amore.
Ma si sbagliava su parecchi punti. Non fu affatto meglio. All'età di Asher i sentimenti sono molto profondi. E lui non la dimenticò.
==========
Più passano gli anni, più capisco per quale ragione Tsedraiter Ike ripetesse sempre la sua canzone. «Sono soltanto io, dai paesi di là dal mare, Barnacle il marinaio». Sono soltanto io. Una frase che anche mia madre aveva cominciato a impiegare quando mi telefonava. Soltanto io. Nessuno che sia degno di stima.
==========
Lei desidera discorrere d'arte con lui. È confusa per ciò che le ha detto sulla caricatura. Mendel le ha detto che l'arte non consiste in una semplice riproduzione di ciò che non appartiene al suo territorio. Che l'artista ricrea sempre l'oggetto della sua visione, e in tal modo fa apparire qualcosa che prima non c'era. Disegnare una caricatura, però, vuol dire riconoscere una dipendenza da qualcosa di precedente all'opera, se non addirittura evocare quel qualcosa, perché solo richiamando l'originale il caricaturista può far sì che gli altri si accorgano della sua esagerazione. In questo senso, il caricaturista è l'artista che meno somiglia a Dio, quello meno originale. Ma poiché egli è per natura un artista satirico, e la principale spinta alla satira è il diniego della realtà, allora è anche quello che maggiormente somiglia a Dio.
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Ho bisogno di credere che continuano a pensare a me. Non pretendo che provino un sentimento di nostalgia, ma che almeno mi considerino unico. Solo in questo modo esisto in quanto uomo. Non nella carne, come una donna, che vive nei figli, nella casa che si è fatta, nei risultati tangibili della sua devozione. No, l'uomo è una creatura più spirituale. L'uomo vive nella percezione affettiva che la donna ha di lui e che si porta dietro. E quando la donna rivela questo omuncolo affettivo all'uomo del quale è un'idealizzazione, quell'uomo riesce a stento a contenere la sua felicità.
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«Ogni uomo uccide le cose che ama» disse, quando sollevai lo sguardo su di lui. «Il vigliacco lo fa con un bacio. L'uomo valoroso con una spada. Ma talvolta anche il vigliacco lo fa con la spada».
Mi augurò la buonanotte e si ritirò un'altra volta.
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I matti ci sanno fare con i bambini, questa era una cosa che avevo già notato in precedenza. Forse i bambini sono della taglia giusta. Forse non si accorgono delle loro stranezze. Non intendo spingermi al punto di affermare che hanno in comune con i pazzi delle doti visionarie. Però sembravano trovarsi a loro agio con lui come lo sarebbero stati con qualunque altro bambino. Al punto che mi ritrovai a chiedermi se per caso Manny non possedesse un talento speciale per fare il padre, un dono che, tragicamente, non aveva mai trovato l'opportunità di esercitare. E dire che doveva confrontarsi con dei termini di paragone insolitamente buoni.
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Fu dura cercare di spiegargli, senza urtare i suoi sentimenti di ebreo onorario, che a un funerale ebraico, come regola generale, non si fa grande sfoggio di fiori, e comunque non li si mette mai sulla bara. I fiori ai funerali erano troppo banali e vistosi. La parola MAMMA composta da rose rosa era impensabile per un ebreo. Quella PAPÀ fatta di gerani rossi altrettanto. La norma era la semplicità. Un'austera semplicità di fronte alla grande democrazia della morte. Se si iniziano a mettere fiori sulla bara, immediatamente il ricco verrà sepolto nello sfarzo e il povero nella miseria.
«È una religione veramente bella» disse Mick. Non era in grado di trattenere le lacrime.
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December 3, 2024
This book felt like it is for a very specific audience, but I think I'm in that audience. The book is basically about cultural Jewishness. The mother here plays Kalooki, but I couldn't get out of my head that she should have been playing Mah Jongg instead. But that's probably just my own bias based on my more American Jewish friends and relatives instead of the British set that are at the center of this book.
This is a slow-moving, meandering, and sometimes frustrating novel. I imagine there are many readers who would even call it a slog. So try it at your own risk.
This is a slow-moving, meandering, and sometimes frustrating novel. I imagine there are many readers who would even call it a slog. So try it at your own risk.
August 26, 2024
Thoroughly enjoyed this book, very clever and had LOL moments.
June 26, 2018
Does anyone really need another review of Kalooki Nights?
Come on, be frank to yourselves.
Should I start by mentioning the obvious remark that Howard Jacobson won the 2010 Booker Prize?
No. And, well, no.
Well, let's put it in this way.
I wanted to read this novel long before "The Finkler Question" got published and rewarded, but - obviously enough - my interest for Jacobson began after having read that notorious review by Jonathan Safran Foer on The New York Times. Many of you did the same, isn't it?
"This book is the best of our generation" claimed JSF. And I was deadly curious to see what was all this fuss about although the literary authority of Mr Safran Foer was not really the highest to me after those two surely talented but rather messy novels of him.
What else to add now? You would probably like me to say that my expectations were so big that they have not been fulfilled by the actual book, by its style, by its plot, by its black (?) humour.
Much ado about nothing, then? Not really.
Overall, I kind of liked "Kalooki Nights", but my first attempt to get into it was unsuccessful and ended up at the seventh line of page 16. When I restarted, I tried to win over the feeling that Jacobson was simply trying to impress me and his readers rather than setting up a story. There were too many stops and goes, too many reiterated concepts and, yes, far too many references to that sweet&sour Jewish sense of belonging.
While masters like, say, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow, Mordecai Richler, Bernard Malamud and -discontinuously- Philip Roth were able to express in a natural and convincing way the links of their roots through their literary production, Mr Jacobson is not or, at least, doesn't feel like he can.
That's the main reason why the obsession for Jewishness, its diaspora and its "Five Thousand Years of Bitterness" (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, does it ring any bell?) permeating this novel seems made up in an artificial way by someone who doesn't have any Jewish background.
Plus, the jokes and trivial cracks about the Jews that are popping up every now and then are the oldest and silliest ever and I felt an authentic embarassment on behalf of Howard Jacobson while reading them. Not to mention the onomatopeic cry "Jew Jew Jew" of the Auschwitz Express (sic!) that the author seems so proud of.
Bah. Quoting Coleridge, Singer, Wittgenstein, Améry, Koestler and Art Spiegelman (being the protagonist a Jewish cartoonist obsessed by the Holocaust, the last name was blatantly awaited) does not help in redeeming the unfortunate choices of Jacobson.
Where "Kalooki Nights" succeeds is in portraying a bunch of male characters, starting from the socially excluded, introvert Manny, his brother Asher -torned between faith and love- passing through the narrator's secularist dad and the volcanic dirty-minded Errol Tobias.
Where "Kalooki Nights" fails is in giving a realistic picture of women. All women. But particularly the wives and lovers of the protagonist who are all selfish, racist, snobbish and sarcastic. One wonders what the hell Max the cartoonist found in these harpies and I wonder if Jacobson posed himself the same question apart from scribbling down the ridicolous attraction played by letter "ë". (Zoë, Chloë, Katchën...)
Ok, it was not my intention being too critical. This is a good novel. It tells you a lot about life in a mainly Jewish suburb in Manchester in the 1950s and there is plenty of well-crafted pages in "Kalooki Nights". It's just a pity that not all the pieces of this puzzle are put down in a convincing way.
Given this, I think Jonathan Safran Foer should read more contemporary literature.
Come on, be frank to yourselves.
Should I start by mentioning the obvious remark that Howard Jacobson won the 2010 Booker Prize?
No. And, well, no.
Well, let's put it in this way.
I wanted to read this novel long before "The Finkler Question" got published and rewarded, but - obviously enough - my interest for Jacobson began after having read that notorious review by Jonathan Safran Foer on The New York Times. Many of you did the same, isn't it?
"This book is the best of our generation" claimed JSF. And I was deadly curious to see what was all this fuss about although the literary authority of Mr Safran Foer was not really the highest to me after those two surely talented but rather messy novels of him.
What else to add now? You would probably like me to say that my expectations were so big that they have not been fulfilled by the actual book, by its style, by its plot, by its black (?) humour.
Much ado about nothing, then? Not really.
Overall, I kind of liked "Kalooki Nights", but my first attempt to get into it was unsuccessful and ended up at the seventh line of page 16. When I restarted, I tried to win over the feeling that Jacobson was simply trying to impress me and his readers rather than setting up a story. There were too many stops and goes, too many reiterated concepts and, yes, far too many references to that sweet&sour Jewish sense of belonging.
While masters like, say, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow, Mordecai Richler, Bernard Malamud and -discontinuously- Philip Roth were able to express in a natural and convincing way the links of their roots through their literary production, Mr Jacobson is not or, at least, doesn't feel like he can.
That's the main reason why the obsession for Jewishness, its diaspora and its "Five Thousand Years of Bitterness" (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, does it ring any bell?) permeating this novel seems made up in an artificial way by someone who doesn't have any Jewish background.
Plus, the jokes and trivial cracks about the Jews that are popping up every now and then are the oldest and silliest ever and I felt an authentic embarassment on behalf of Howard Jacobson while reading them. Not to mention the onomatopeic cry "Jew Jew Jew" of the Auschwitz Express (sic!) that the author seems so proud of.
Bah. Quoting Coleridge, Singer, Wittgenstein, Améry, Koestler and Art Spiegelman (being the protagonist a Jewish cartoonist obsessed by the Holocaust, the last name was blatantly awaited) does not help in redeeming the unfortunate choices of Jacobson.
Where "Kalooki Nights" succeeds is in portraying a bunch of male characters, starting from the socially excluded, introvert Manny, his brother Asher -torned between faith and love- passing through the narrator's secularist dad and the volcanic dirty-minded Errol Tobias.
Where "Kalooki Nights" fails is in giving a realistic picture of women. All women. But particularly the wives and lovers of the protagonist who are all selfish, racist, snobbish and sarcastic. One wonders what the hell Max the cartoonist found in these harpies and I wonder if Jacobson posed himself the same question apart from scribbling down the ridicolous attraction played by letter "ë". (Zoë, Chloë, Katchën...)
Ok, it was not my intention being too critical. This is a good novel. It tells you a lot about life in a mainly Jewish suburb in Manchester in the 1950s and there is plenty of well-crafted pages in "Kalooki Nights". It's just a pity that not all the pieces of this puzzle are put down in a convincing way.
Given this, I think Jonathan Safran Foer should read more contemporary literature.
December 21, 2014
I think Howard Jacobson can be a terrific writer. The Finkler Question,which won the Booker Prize is one of my favorites. Funny, hilarious, poignant and scary. When I got Kalooki Nights I was expected the same reaction. There is a plot here, somewhere, about growing up Jewish in America after the war and the complex relationships and characters acting as influential satellites to Max Glickman. The first half covers those childhood years and the friendship between Max and Manny, the orthodox boy next door, with all the delicious stories and descriptions, mysteries and hilarity I expected.
Early on there's a reference to a horrendous crime Manny committed later in his life and from that point on the book begins to disintegrate. The plot becomes secondary to endlessly long diversions of sub-plots and comments and examples and monologs that are so confusing and distracting I barely cared anymore.
Let me say that the first half is so brilliant you should read it anyway. Maybe you will get it, all the way through.
A few quotes:
"Was it simply Manny's bad luck?...His Father trying to kill him, his brother foaming at the mouth, his Mother yelling, "Stop it, Stop it! and throwing salt on the combatants, as though to kosher them into stopping."
" You bring another woman in your life and suddenly your Mother is a Busby Berkeley Musical Extravaganza.
"When the devil seeks to make trouble in a Jewish family he does it as a blonde."
and just one more
"....some dark Byzantine event in an underground Synagogue...that ghastly men-only Hasidic jigging behind screens erected to stop the women seeing what would arouse them into sexual hysteria if they did - a whirling blur of hump-backed scholars in their long black coats making old country Jew Jew Hare Krishna circles around the bar mitzvah boy."
You can see why I had such high hopes.
Early on there's a reference to a horrendous crime Manny committed later in his life and from that point on the book begins to disintegrate. The plot becomes secondary to endlessly long diversions of sub-plots and comments and examples and monologs that are so confusing and distracting I barely cared anymore.
Let me say that the first half is so brilliant you should read it anyway. Maybe you will get it, all the way through.
A few quotes:
"Was it simply Manny's bad luck?...His Father trying to kill him, his brother foaming at the mouth, his Mother yelling, "Stop it, Stop it! and throwing salt on the combatants, as though to kosher them into stopping."
" You bring another woman in your life and suddenly your Mother is a Busby Berkeley Musical Extravaganza.
"When the devil seeks to make trouble in a Jewish family he does it as a blonde."
and just one more
"....some dark Byzantine event in an underground Synagogue...that ghastly men-only Hasidic jigging behind screens erected to stop the women seeing what would arouse them into sexual hysteria if they did - a whirling blur of hump-backed scholars in their long black coats making old country Jew Jew Hare Krishna circles around the bar mitzvah boy."
You can see why I had such high hopes.
December 13, 2010
Oy!While I'm waiting for my chance to read "The Finkler Question" - this year's Man Booker winner, I thought I would acquaint myself with some of Jacobson's back list. If I thought parts of "The Making of Henry" were a bit of a slog, putting up with the tiresome neuroses a character perhaps overly concerned with the "Jewish angle" of his every social encounter...then "Kalooki Nights" is a virtual gauntlet-run over-the-top OCD OBSESSING about any conceivable Jewish angle about absolutely EVERYTHING. I heard Jacobson himself on NPR describing this book as Jew Jew Jew, joke joke joke, etc....and he is not exaggerating...except perhaps about the jokes. There are some funny passages, to be sure...and some interesting insights to the differences in culture and concerns among British Jews from Americans, but not enough levity, for my taste, to sustain 450 pages. Some reviewers have tried to label Jacobson as the English Phillip Roth, and to that he has said he prefers to be the Jewish Jane Austen. In Kalooki Nights Jacobson makes Roth at his most vulgar seem quaint - and, as for Jane Austen, well, I can't imagine her getting past the first page or two without suffering an aneurysm. Surely a comedy of manners should have - besides comedy (and there is some of that) - recognizable manners, and there are precious few of those to behold among the landsmen or the goyim in this book.
July 11, 2018
A towering, rangy, horrific, moving book. The edition I read was too carelessly copy-edited for my taste -- I can understand how difficult it must be to ferret out the syntactical hiccups and typos in the prose of a writer with as circumlocutive a style as Jacobson's, but I fancy that if I had copy-edited the book, there would have been three or four errors, and none of them significant, as opposed to the two dozen or so herein -- but the brilliance of the novel makes it easier than it should be to overlook the slapdash proofreading. The ideas are gargantuan, the ambition and perception likewise and the image-making as disarming and precise as one could hope it to be (from eyes that boil "like volcanoes" to a woman with "a storm cloud of charcoal hair" to a man so afire with love for his beloved that one "could see the flames from Jericho").
September 17, 2013
This is one of the most powerful and enjoyable books that I have read. It is both funny, terribly serious, happy and sad. I am an orthodox Jew who grew up in London so I can most probably identify more easily with the book and have a better understanding of the background and issues raised.
Kalooki Nights deals with the holocaust from a Jewish perspective decades afterwards and the result is deeply disturbing. Jacobson deserves to be either locked up or receive a medal for having the introspection revolve around a Jew gassing his own parents.
Jacobson's treatment of love is also masterful and thought provoking.
I can well understand if some people don't like the style or find it difficult to connect with the style and content. For me, reading this book was an intense literary and human experience and I highly recommend it.
Kalooki Nights deals with the holocaust from a Jewish perspective decades afterwards and the result is deeply disturbing. Jacobson deserves to be either locked up or receive a medal for having the introspection revolve around a Jew gassing his own parents.
Jacobson's treatment of love is also masterful and thought provoking.
I can well understand if some people don't like the style or find it difficult to connect with the style and content. For me, reading this book was an intense literary and human experience and I highly recommend it.
January 13, 2014
Howard Jacobson is a very bright guy. The complexity of his mind comes through in his writing though the writing itself isn't complex (aside from the amazing vocabulary which had me going to the dictionary every few pages.) He also sees the humor in life, often macabre. This book is all about what it means to be a post WW2 Jewish male told from a frame of reference of teenage Maxie in the 1950s in Manchester, and a 60ish Maxie in pursuit of a story which started in his youth. I'm not Jewish, and I sometimes feel the Jewish people are too obsessed with themselves, but I nevertheless found the book fascinating and enjoyable.
I've liked all of his novels, his most recent - Zoo Time - the most as I saw him broadening his intellectual focus in that. Don't be put off by my use of "intellectual" - he writes as ably about people as ideas.
I've liked all of his novels, his most recent - Zoo Time - the most as I saw him broadening his intellectual focus in that. Don't be put off by my use of "intellectual" - he writes as ably about people as ideas.
September 30, 2011
I really enjoy Howard Jacobson. He writes very much from a Jewish perspective, which I enjoy as a converted Jew, and as an American Jew, as he is British. His style reminds me a little of John Irving, in that his stories are sweeping narratives of an entire life, from early childhood to late adulthood, with extremely complicated and intertwining multiple plotlines and themes. This book lost steam for me about two thirds through. The narrative is not linear, but jumps around in time a lot, and the plot advances sometimes in increments so tiny that, with a little shrewd guesswork, the reader is able to arrive at the conclusion before the narrator does. Still, it was a good read - funny, smart and sympathetic.
July 31, 2009
Wow. I thought this book was an amazing combination of interesting story, depth of character, surprising insight, non-linear storytelling, with lots and lots of very funny observations. The narrator, Max Glickman, is nothing like me, yet I was right there with him, even when he was having a hard time admitting and acknowledging his thoughts or his words or his actions. There was no one in the book who I recognized, although pieces of the characters were familiar to me. Like The Finkler Question, it's about being Jewish. Yet, it's a very different book.
This book is totally worth the time commitment it requires of the reader.
This book is totally worth the time commitment it requires of the reader.
October 24, 2012
Il voto poteva tranquillamente essere brutto, o deleterio, insopportabile, eterno... mi sono limitata a così così perché forse sono io che non l'ho capito.
Forse, che è un forse come quello di Elio a Parco Sempione.
Comunque: mai come questa volta ho avuto l'impressione che un libro non finisse mai. Ogni 5 minuti mi chiedevo: "Ma non l'ho già letto questo????" "Ma non ne ha già parlato???".
L'autore è come l'assassino che torna sempre sul luogo del delitto.
E poi: Zoe, Chloe, l'umlaut! Almeno Svevo aveva coscienza di dover andare in analisi!!!!
Posso al massimo riconoscergli dell'ironia ma è talmente subissata dalla noia che quasi non si nota.
Forse, che è un forse come quello di Elio a Parco Sempione.
Comunque: mai come questa volta ho avuto l'impressione che un libro non finisse mai. Ogni 5 minuti mi chiedevo: "Ma non l'ho già letto questo????" "Ma non ne ha già parlato???".
L'autore è come l'assassino che torna sempre sul luogo del delitto.
E poi: Zoe, Chloe, l'umlaut! Almeno Svevo aveva coscienza di dover andare in analisi!!!!
Posso al massimo riconoscergli dell'ironia ma è talmente subissata dalla noia che quasi non si nota.
April 2, 2011
Jacobson's writing is a bit long winded; it takes him a long time to get where he's going. But the truth is, that's one of the aspects I enjoyed most about reading the book. His non-linear narrative jumps from topics, perspectives, eras, and narrators. The major difficulty with his writing style, though, was that the narrative didn't move enough to really captivate me. I didn't figure out what the main direction the story was taking until well into the book.
October 15, 2012
Wow, this book really made me think about Jews and Jewish anti-Semitism. It was a painful, but needed study of how Jews deal differently with the Holocaust, being outside the Christian culture, and how there has always been so much disunity between Jews. The reverberations of the Shoah-- we have to find that middle ground between dismissing it and fixating on it. The characters in this book all deal with it in very different and often unhealthy ways.
April 10, 2016
Sure it covers the well trod Philip Roth and Mordechai Richler territory (Jewish heterosexual male guilt, shiksa obsessions, male friendship amid a scandal), but this is savage, brutally honest and rewarding writing. A lot of it hit very close to home - the struggle to connect with parents, how to emerge from under the shadow of the Holocaust, dealing with the otherness of being Jewish. It hit me much harder than The Finkler Question. It's demanding reading but very much worth it.
March 21, 2009
I think 1 star was more than it deserved........this book took me 2 weeks when usually a book is 1-3 days of reading for me. Half of the time my mind was wandering or the book was rambling. Chalk it up to my perseverence or this book would have been chucked after 20 pages. I would not recommend this book......ever!!!
August 12, 2017
A hard read for me. I'd read another book by Jacobson which I really liked--he's a superb writer. However, this comment from The New Yorker on the book jacket ("Caustic insights and hilarious detours.") was extremely misleading. I'll grant you the caustic and the detours were there, but I found no hilarity in it.
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