Meiselman: The Lean Years

by Avner Landes

Meiselman has had enough. After a life spent playing by the rules, this lonely thirty-six-year-old man―"number two" at a suburban Chicago public library, in charge of events and programs, and in no control whatsoever over his fantasies about his domineering boss―is looking to come out on top, at last. What seems like an ordinary week in 2004 will prove to be a golden opportunity (at least in his mind) to reverse a lifetime of petty humiliations. And no one―not his newly observant wife, not the Holocaust survivor neighbor who regularly disturbs his sleep with her late-night gardening, and certainly not the former-classmate-turned-renowned-author who's returning to the library for a triumphant literary homecoming―will stand in his way.

" Meiselman is a triumph of comic escalation." ― Sam Lipsyte, author of Hark and The Ask

Genres: Fiction, Jewish

416 pages, Paperback

Published March 9, 2021

Reviews

[Stacey B]

I rated this now so the author will know I read the book, as I had said in a post I would.
But more important, I remember thinking at the time this rating may not be fair due to my
timing of the read, and could very well be a 5*.
It wouldn't be the first or second time for me to re-read a book for that reason- glad I recognized it.

[W.D. Clarke]

Interviewer: Oscar Wilde believed that no man is truthful. Give him a mask, he said, and he will tell you the truth. Do you think we can be truthful to ourselves without masks? Difficult but doable, if anyone is asking Meiselman.

[…] there is a footnote to explain the archaic English. The next line, however, “Cowards die many times before their deaths,” is one he has no trouble understanding.

Favorite quote: “If you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.” - Gandhi, Gandhi.

Avner Landes’s latest novel, The Delegation, is quite celebrated in indie circles, where, from the periphery of which, and from what I have seen, anyway, it has been universally well-reviewed. I thought I definitely needed to read it, but with authors new to me I also do so like to start with where the author themselves started off, with their debut book, I mean, and so this review is concerned with Landes’s first novel, Meiselman: The Lean Years (2021, Tortoise Books), which I found to be an enjoyable, meticulously crafted, and at times hilarious examination not of the contemporary Jewish community wholesale (à la Philip Roth’s Goodbye Columbus, say, but of one particular member of that community, as he wages pointlessly unhinged battles-in-miniature with those closest to him in that community—his wife and family (‘naturally’), his co-workers, former schoolmates, even synagogue seatmates (relentlessly), and most especially himself (always, on every single page).

But only in the movies does a thirty-six-year-old man change. In real life, a man with his back against the wall can only double down.

Fundamentally, then, this book is most about the billions of microaggressions life throws at us and we throw at each other at least in our minds every hour of every day. And it’s utterly daring, if to some at times, potentially off-putting, to watch the main character, Meiselman’s id rebel against the super-ego the whole day long, as said warring thoughts spatter themselves against the pitifully lowres vizscreen of his ego, like a telltale Rorschach test. The object being, not to reveal the small-mindedness of one man, but the small-mindedness that we must all put up with, at home, at work, and in our own heads. This is a tour de force examination of the lengths that scheming, manipulative, Cyclopean minds will go to win life’s manifold, very-small-stakes battles—which we all recognise only because authors like Landes have so thoroughly etiologized them.

Being trapped in one ‘meisel’-ing or ‘chisel’-ing (OED: to cut away/out, pare down—but also, in its usage as slang, to cheat, defraud, or intrude) ‘character’s skull dept: one particularly apt analogy for this that comes to mind, when I think about this character and novel, is William Gass’s own blinkered/dissembling-digger, Frederick Kohler in The Tunnel, in which we get a picture of a very minor monster across a fairly large canvas (652 rigorous pages to this one’s hardly-svelte 412) . Meiselman‘s take on this, though, is less unremitting-forbidding and more unflagging-meticulous (a distinction), and most importantly, not so much bleak epic as ironic comedy, and, though I bowed to the majesty of Gass’s great novel in reading it, for me Meiselman* was arguably the more enjoyable of the two, and ultimately perhaps the more hard-hitting for me, as there is a kind of greatness to the soul of Gass’s Kohler in spite of his own efforts at self-diminishment (making Planet Kohler a fair bit beyond my ken), while gazing Meiselman’s sheer moral midgetry at time felt more like having a conversation with my own mirror.

As the novel opens, (library events coordinator) Meiselman is obsessing over the latest outrage to his (lack of) pride: a visiting writer, who is, most tragically, also a former schoolmate-made-good, must surely be coming back to his hometown only to rub his moderate—via epater-ing la bourgeoisie & scandalizing the Orthodox elders—successes in Meiselman’s still-unfledged face), and so we are treated to a pitch-perfect encapsulation of the protagonist’s existential (however much lilliputian as well), condition, with Meiselman gazing at Deena/Daisy, his wife and imagining her concern over

[…] the hopelessness of his situation. If her husband respects the library’s mission and allows Shenkenberg to speak unopposed they, the community, will stigmatize Meiselman as a cancer spreader, infection grower, fever elevator. On the other hand, is he willing to go up on the stake to defend fundamental beliefs? To expect martyrdom in this day and age is archaic, barbaric. This is New Niles in the new millennium. Protests are futile, intransigence slows nothing down. Everyone is replaceable with a click of a mouse. Skipping town and starting anew must have seemed the perfect solution to Deena. So his ever-impulsive wife dialed the listed broker, and while on hold, she may have fantasized about the four-bedroom country house in the UP […]

Meiselman anticipates still-further humiliation and losering, and compensates the only way he knows how, by entering a patently gonzo fantasy world in which his wife does not, as usual, run away with a crazy, but manly patient of hers, Randy, but comes up with a crackpot solution to what is, he knows his very small-potatoes problem, but a massive problem for him nonetheless: how are they to avoid the social shame of the humiliation of a successful library reading by the semi-successful semi-famous writer? By running away to the ‘UP’ or Upper Peninsula of Michigan and starting a completely new life, like a pair of FBI informants on witness protection—after the above ellipsis, the passage continues in this mode, which should give the perspective reader a taste of what I am flailing away at saying here, as well as precisely they’re in for in purchasing such a self-hating (in the most good way imaginable) novel like this:

So his ever-impulsive wife dialed the listed broker, and while on hold, she may have fantasized about the four-bedroom country house in the UP Meiselman showed her earlier at breakfast. Four hundred miles north of Chicago, I will start a new life with Meisie. Cradling our morning mugs of coffee on the bedroom balcony, we spot deer darting across our land. Right there, Meisie, behind the pond. Are those wild turkeys? Quick kiss because we are living a dream. Oh, Meisie, I call to him, the great room’s cathedral ceiling carrying my voice to the kitchen where he is spreading mayonnaise on our roast beef sandwiches, high-cholesterol no longer a concern in this rural existence. . Later that night, the window shades open, not a neighbor in sight, we wrestle on the couch, each trying to strip the clothes off the other. To the hot tub. Knock flutes of champagne because we are in love. Randy lifts his leg out of the water, showing off his lateral movement. Meiselman tries forcing Randy out of Deena’s fantasy but all he can do to knock Deena’s fantasy dead is to think of the pink-haired girl’s hair touching his hand.

Deena’s middling reaction to the real estate section was most probably her finally having tired of his weekly joke of moving to one of the coldest parts of the country. Do White Sox games even transmit that far north?

If Deena returns home in the next fifteen minutes, which he is confident she will because these lunches must mean the world to her as well, they will still have enough time to eat before the first pitch. But he will have to have the meal prepared, not only to save time, but so that when Deena comes through the front door, winded and tripping over her shopping bags and excuses, she will set her eyes on the table set for two, cut sandwiches on each plate, glasses filled to the brim with orange juice and will coo, What do I do to deserve you? Leave her fretting over her tardiness, leave her questioning whether she reciprocates equally.

Meiselman can ‘live’ through all of small-l life’s little trials in only two mutually-incompatible ways: by escaping into fantasy until said fantasy gives him the kind of small-m manipulative insight/ammunition with which to (fail at attempting to) control those in his oh-so-tiny interpersonal network—those who threaten him the most, much more than such an invading, exotic species as a mid-list visiting author.

Consider, then, another passage from early on in the book, after the daylight version of Meiselman must suffer through some generation-gap Quality Time with his father in front of the TV, watching baseball. His unfathomably murky unconscious, however, has been wondering, all along, about what could have happened to his wife:

Still no sign of Deena. Should he not be home in case the hospital calls looking for consent? Out carousing with motorcycle maniac Randy, therapist and patient sang along to the car radio, a song they shared during sessions in the Center’s workout room. Deena began mocking Randy’s falsetto sound. Horseplay ensued, fingers tussling in front of the radio’s tuner. Deena rammed the car into a blue U.S. mailbox, the front of the car crumpling like a balled sheet of paper. Consent for surgery, a no brainer. Consent to keep her plugged in? Quality of life issues for Deena, quality of life issues for Meiselman, too. At first, the community will hail Meiselman’s devotion to his vegetable wife, gossiping to one another about his daily visits and willingness to change bedpans. The gossiping, however, will take a perverse turn, and soon rumors will start spreading about Meiselman’s involvement with an older woman, nobody giving him the benefit of the doubt, nobody wanting to hear about a friendship struck up in the hospital waiting room, the mother of Deena’s companion, who sadly did not make it out alive. He fell for her simplicity, the toothpick-thin cross, peach cardigans, and dirty blonde ponytail. In consideration of Deena, just hands, no mouths.

If the doctor comes out and says, I’m sorry, your wife did not pull through, Meiselman can expect the generosity of the community to overwhelm him. For the week of mourning he will feast on chicken, salads, candy platters, and kugels, lots of kugels. How fortunate there are no children, community members will whisper to one another. Ethel will pay a condolence call, offering classy air kisses at her arrival and departure. He will want to collapse his head into her beefy chest for a good cry. The mourning period over, Ethel will suggest getting lost in work is the best way to cope.

Brilliant stuff. Landes is almost always at his best like this, throughout the novel, taking Jewish neurosis to a Spinal Tap ‘11’ without ever feeling like we are in a cartoon version of the culture. Somehow, even manifestly, prima face absurdities like, say, consulting the Rabbi over whether or not a stain on his wife’s undergarments is blood (and so whether or not, um, marital relations are currently verboten—the only time he really finds himself wanting them!)…

All he wants to do is touch Deena, now that it is forbidden and he has nothing to offer verbally. Every month after she starts bleeding, he questions why he did not take enough advantage of the weeks she was clean. Every night they should have. He has tried describing the pain of not being able to touch, but she responds to the flattery by relaying what she learned in the family purity classes she took before they married.

… or going about the menial tasks entrusted to him by Ethel, the head librarian (a former, unrequited flame from middle school, a torch never, alas extinguished), such as allowing the man in charge of the snacks for the author’s reading, the local baker, to tickle him all over like he is five years old, but who can somehow also imaginatively plumb the shallow depths of Meiselman’s abject soul…

[…]and saw a man splitting at the seams, everything turning shaky, a man who has seen things he should not have seen, a man dealing with matters beyond his scope, a man taking liberties he would not normally have taken.

… or imagining what the shrink will say of all of this…

The doctor will throw out a slew of predictable theories to explain the [childhood] bedroom [in his parents’ home]’s intactness. You want to remain a little boy. Your mother wants you to remain a little boy. You and your mother want you to remain her little boy. Your mother harbors the fantasy you will return home. You harbor the fantasy you will return home. You see these relics as infected, and you are scared of transferring the infection into your new home. The sight of them takes you back to times you don’t care to revisit. It’s as if you cannot commit to this new life with your wife. Is this the same reason you are failing to empower your sperm? If the doctor, for once, keeps them on topic, Meiselman will tell her how his mother implores Deena to help Meiselman clear out his bedroom, take whatever he wants next door, and box up the rest for Amvets.

…as well as manifold, actually existing neuroses and, indeed, perversions…

[…] she will find the story edifying, utilizing the next pause to recall Meiselman’s initial reason for coming to her during the transition years.

“Not nudes,” Meiselman will have to correct the doctor’s recollection of the photographs. “And I didn’t know she was my grandmother. For me, it was all about the bathing suit, the pinup pose.”

“Your mind, on some level, must have noticed the resemblance?

…instead of ever actually seeing the shrink, as he has promised his wife that he will…

Oh, Life’s rich pageant may have given Meiselman only a supporting, support-hoser’s role, a quotidian, not operatic ‘Fifth Business’, as the late, great Canadian novelist, Robertson Davies might, in this context, say. And its cornucopia may, alas be replete only with the sourest of lemons and bitter almonds…

Meiselman was fed up, literally and figuratively, with everyone putting their dirty paws on him. This would be the moment when he would stop taking it from the Shenkenbergs, the Betsy Rosses, and the Mitchells of the world. After thirty-six years, Meiselman had reached a limit, a breaking point.

And/but, at novel’s end, Meiselman, ever in story-of-my-life auto-narratorial mode, asks us to ponder (via an assertion about himself, an implicit question about such (self-fulfilling, because self-imposed) humiliation:

[…] is it a fortune cookie quote, or something he read in the newspaper in connection to the two wars, or a theory produced around the time when he had the misunderstanding with \[visiting author] Shenkenberg? Whatever its origin, its truth is undeniable. Every story that begins in humiliation must end in humiliation.

Does it? Must it? The reader will have to read further to find out how Meiselman prepares, or not, to answer that, of course, but given all that they have seen thus far, and given the genre we are surely ‘interrogating’ (as the 90s theory kids usedta say), but still very much in, they might guess at it—which will not reduce the pleasures of later encounter any the less: One always knows that, from the outset of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that risible ‘Bottom’ will rise and rise (in his own eyes) only to fall and fall and fall. So, too, with Meiselman’s lean years, if without much self-asserted, let alone actual, rising. If we must stay down in life’s gutter, Meiselman (and Meiselman) seems to be saying here, there’s not much point in looking to the stars. Let’s imagine the others down here with us, gazing at all the claws and the cankles pawing and padding on by.

Whether, in the end, we readers are trapped in as suffocating a narrative as Orthodox religions betimes provide, we are suffocating nonetheless, the novel seems to me to insist (Meisel- and Everyman a chiseler), and all are ultimately trapped inside the skull with two small windows to look out of, as in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, for good and ill….

[Jan Rice]

A review in stray thoughts:

Hooray--not more chick lit,
But, watch out now: dick lit (sick lit!)

...For the relief of unbearable urges...
Civilization and its discontents...
All is not quiet on the western front.

Can this marriage be saved?
Afraid not.

...another tack,
By bookshelf names:
Not bibliotraumatic.
It is not (yet) bibliotherapeutic; could it morph?
It's not reconciliation/redemptive.
It is ...about books and reading, although the protagonist's limited attention span stymies him;
He cannot concentrate to read.
He may need to keep a suitcase packed, but his likely destination will be his parents.
Religion is present the way reading is present.
Them and us--boiled down here to 'them and me,'
Him against the world,
But hamstrung by double-consciousness.

Several times I thought things would come out okay in the end,
Miraculously; it would have had to be miraculously,
Since he can't win for losing.
Is it weak will? Incompetence?
Self-sabotage by any other name would stink no less

Does the book's name imply an encore?
Can this person be saved?

Well-written, but hard to take,
A comment on society too.
How can the center hold?

[Aaron Hamburger]

Meisleman is definitely one of the funniest books I've read in a while, the story of a nebbishy librarian who thinks he's going to change his life over the course of a fateful few days when a famous writer comes to town. Instead what comes to light is the true nature of his existence. Landes's sentences literally do somersaults on the page! His style is energetic and vivid. You won't forget it.

[Melissa Duclos]

Meiselman, the titular character in this hilarious debut novel, never seems to make the right choice. Whether he's trying to impress a woman with pink hair with his knowledge of literature, vanquish his nemesis in debate at the public library, or just have a conversation with his wife, his actions are often cringe-worthy. Despite his many flaws, I couldn't help but root for Meiselman, in large part because of Landes's skill in rendering a character we can all laugh at, but who is also somehow never the butt of the joke.

[Sara]

Loved this neurotic, irreverent, lushly (and lustily) told novel. OY, Meiselman. Recently, I interviewed the author for Hevria:
https://hevria.com/sara-lippmann/what...

[Leah]

I have a lot of thoughts about Meiselman.
The author and I studied together in a Master's program, and I've always admired his writing style. This book was no exception. Landes paints vivid images, and creates a full, detailed world. The characters in this book, especially Meiselman himself, but also many of the other characters, feel like real people, not stereotypes or NPCs.

Meiselman is a horrible character, and he's realistic in how awful he is. We all have a little Meiselman in us. We all sometimes think we're being mistreated when there's no ill intent, we all sometimes want to reassure ourselves that we're better than we are, and we all sometimes give in to our baser desires.

Reading Meiselman was ike having a spider crawl across my arm, and being unable to remove it. I felt disgusted, disturbed, and a sense of horrid fascination at how much worse things just kept getting.

In its own way, Meiselman was a lot more horrifying than my usual fare of Stephen King, where the monsters aren't just humans with good intentions.

[Joan]

I want to read the book written by the person who wrote the description of this book. That book sounded amazing and funny. This book was dreary. I hated all the characters, and I'd be hard pressed to find any redeeming qualities about them.

Basically, a man from an orthodox Jewish family, has had little luck in both work and life and is constantly number two, thinks that it is everyone else's fault that he is like this. He has this strange relationship with his wife (who has converted for him) and he is always trying to outsmart and avoid her at every opportunity, while being drawn to her when she isn't available to him.

Though I come from a Jewish family, we are not orthodox, so, I learned a few new things about this particular sect of Judaism. Things I didn't wish to know. Things I cannot un-know. I hope people that read this, might realize that not all sects live by such rules.

I finished, hoping it would get better, and hoping at some point it would be as funny as promised. It was mainly uncomfortable situations brought on by Meiselman himself.

[Lee Klein]

Like an observant Curb Your Enthusiasm or a bottle of seltzer in book form, intentionally shaken until the giddy effervescence threatens total explosion.

[John Julius]

Meiselman: The Lean Years is impressive. From the “Saturday” chapter till the end—about a quarter of the book—the writing is inspired. A lot of reviewers call the book funny. I’d say it’s comic; the irony it displays is sad. Although Meiselman’s company wasn’t exactly a pleasure, he’s an unforgettable character. I heard Landes say on some podcast that he likes “exhausting” books. I’m almost sure that’s the term he used. Well, he’s written one, in the best possible sense. Meiselman, as well as the supporting characters, are skilfully, sharply, and roundly drawn. Landes’s artistry kept me engaged from page one, leading me to the end, which was softly transcendent. So many books these days end poorly. So many books start strong and then fizzle out. Meisleman builds slowly but finally launches the reader off. It certainly launched me off. The world fell away for me during that last quarter of the book.

[Mark Zvonkovic]

This clever novel gives the reader an hilarious perspective of a young man bumbling his way through work, religion and sex.

Although Meiselman is meant to be humorous, it’s protagonist, Meiselman, is tragic. He lives in a house given to him by, and very close to, his stereotypically funny Jewish parents, who don’t think of themselves as funny, only as seriously observant Jews. His wife, Deena or Daisy, depending on the circumstance, had to take courses on how to be observant. She takes it seriously, although it seems more out of duty than belief. And Meiselman is a mess who keeps sliding away from observance, when he isn’t thinking about the Chicago Cubs. Judaism in the novel is a bit murky, as much from the depiction of the characters as from the attempts at humor.

The story is told from Meiselman’s point of view almost exclusively. Sometimes it is hard to tell where an observation is coming from because Landes disguises it. But everything that happens is sifted through Meiselman’s eyes and one needs to question how much these depictions are slanted. Meiselman also portrays action in advance, as he does after his meeting with the Rav when on his way home with the Rav’s pronouncement concerning the blood spot on his wife’s underwear, he “envisions how the rest of the night will unfold.” His vision is strangely sexual and in the end he comments, “This is more or less what happens.” It is hard to know whether that comment is truthful, as is the case with most of his commentary, particularly when it is coupled with memories of his childhood, like the ones with Ethel, who also happens to be his boss. Meiselman’s circumspection is particularly profound when he is interacting with the pink-haired woman, who during all of the novel is a subject of his poorly concealed lust. She asks a question at the Shenkenberg reading and Meiselman’s rendition about it is more about himself than her, “Indeed, she is the liberator. You’ve made it to the stage is the pink-haired woman’s message. The light shines on you the same as it does for Shenkenberg, while the rest of us sit cramped in narrow seats on the other side, faceless in the dark.” It’s no matter that the pink-haired woman’s question itself isn’t repeated.

Meiselman, the novel, is a very long concoction of strands of Meiselman’s neuroses looping in and out of memories and rationalizations about his tortured life. The problem with the story is its length. The strands the narrator weaves during the narration start to entangle with themselves after about three hundred pages and the story begins to gasp for air. We’ve heard it too many times, already, readers will want to say. Put us (and Meiselman) out of our misery. Please.

[Sorelle]

This morning, I finished reading Meiselman: The Lean Years, a debut novel by Avner Landes. My first thought after devouring the last sentence was: So many people are going to love this book. Which of my friends will borrow it first? With no small measure of excitement did I add it to my fresh pile of books-by-the-front-door. I wasn't sure what to expect before I read it.

The book's reviews told me it was a "triumph of comic escalation" about a "suburban schlemiel's endless capacity for self-sabotage." The book certainly delivered on all those fronts and more.
What particularly took my breath away was how even though the book centers around a frustrated "second-in-command" at the local library who invites disaster at every turn, and whose delusions of grandeur set him up for disappointment and anguish, we can all find parts of ourselves in Meiselman. Who among us at at least at one point in our lives hasn't felt misunderstood and aches to be perceived by others how we perceive ourselves? The book is exquisitely raw, honest, insightful, and humbling - as well as hilarious and deeply entertaining - and essentially an invitation for us all to take a look inside ourselves.

Avner Landes is an exceptional observer of human nature which bears fruit in his epic novel "Meiselman." I really had a hard time saying goodbye to Meiselman - both the book and the character. Can't wait to see what Avi comes up with next. Not often I read a book twice, but might have to make an exception for Meiselman. Do yourself a favor and add this to your list of summer 2021 books to read. You won't be sorry.

[Jennifer Van Oosbree]

Meiselman reminded me of a male Eleanor Oliphant... oblivious to how out of touch they are with the world around them. Funny book about a librarian in a Jewish community.

[Chava]

I'm not a fan of books where the main character ruminates, so it took me a long time to read this one. I credit the author with weaving a story about a shlemazel, and creating interesting secondary characters that contribute to Meiselman's challenges and push him to break free from his "shlemazelness."

Although the Meiselman is supposed to be Orthodox, he breaks a lot of rules, particularly keeping kosher and not "spilling his seed." A running gag that involves Meiselman taking his wife's underwear to a rabbi to check for blood, and then continually pulling the underpants out of his pocket at awkward moments, fell flat for this reader.

[Shelley]

There was a lot to like about the writing the humor and the characters but it was a challenge for me as the inevitability of the protagonist making the wrong choice and misreading his environment got tiring and a little anxiety producing.

[Carly Pask]

I related so much to this character, maybe not as myself, but definitely as some of my relatives/friends. Landes held nothing back, and for that, I thank him.

[Tucker]

I was interested the premise of a 36-year-old Jewish librarian going rogue to resolve his 2004 midlife crisis. The main character is — I believe intentionally — dislikable or at least off-putting, and to that extent I think the book is done well, although of course a dislikable main character presents a natural barrier to the reader liking the book. I became exhausted by the voice in Chapter 8 and put away the novel for about five months, at which point, having forgotten what happened in Chapter 8, I picked it up again.

The sentences are stylistically beautiful, elaborately precise and with a glassy coolness, like crystals. The mood is pensive, but not uplifting.

Moments I like in the second half of the book include when Shenkenberg says into a microphone that everyone “works at some point in life to become our own rebbe.” He adds: “Only a sociopath embraces the position of rebbe with ease, without mourning over the killed fathers. The book is titled The Sad Rebbe.”

I’m also interested by Meiselman’s grumbling: “Stolidity, the ability to not allow a misfortunate incident to mark one’s character, is no longer a virtue. The people of this generation want their episodes to define them, which is why people are willing to freely discuss personal shortcomings. * * * This new generation freely picks and chooses whether an episode is profound or immaterial, and they never pick correctly.”

[M.R. Ruth]

Avner Landes is a master storyteller. This is a must-read.

[Erika Dreifus]

As the cover suggests, this is a book with a library connection: Protagonist Meiselman works as events and programs coordinator for a Chicago-area library. And there's a major book-focused plotline, concerning a single author event, that runs through the novel. I'm always drawn to novels that are somehow embedded in a world of books, so I was happy to be offered a copy of this one.

We spend the week-long narrative present of this novel (despite the book's subtitle, only in flashback do we cover past "years") lodged in the mind/perspective of the protagonist, and that can be an uncomfortable place to be. Certainly, Meiselman is not a happy guy. I imagine that he may evoke a range of responses in readers. He's a flawed character, to be sure (my own reaction to him contains a large dose of pity). But one senses that the author understands this. I also sense that fans of the Chicago White Sox (and, um, Portnoy's Complaint) may feel more immediately at home in Meiselman's world than I did.

I read in an interview that the author is currently at work on a novel set in Chicago, New York, and Israel. I will be eager to know when that one's available.

[Fran]

This is so hard to rate. The writing is quality...smart, funny at times. I’ve read many books with hard-to-love characters, but everyone in this book annoyed me. Quality deserves 4 stars, but I found the story a struggle to get through, as I was not invested in any of the characters.

[Cain S.]

This is an excerpt from the review that can be read in its entirety on
https://middlebrowse.com/books/review...

'Heroism necessarily involves a tragic element. Its pursuit pits one against insuperable forces for an unlikely reward. This is why it elicits respect more readily than does celebrity, which owes more to time and chance than to self-abnegating endeavour. What distinguishes celebrities from heroes is that they thrive on being engaging and entertaining. Heroism makes no such demands. A hero might with impunity be a sanctimonious bore, a self-satisfied prig who makes others feel bad about themselves. His standing among his people isn’t based on likability but achievement. A celebrity cannot afford this attitude to his public; his likability—within the confines of his discipline—is the sine qua non of his achievement. None of this shows, of course, that losers are heroic because they struggle against themselves or even that they cannot be likeable and entertaining without also being celebrities. The titular protagonist of Meiselman: The Lean Years has at the age of thirty-six had an epiphany: he’s been a pushover ever since he can remember, and he doesn’t want to be the good guy who finishes last. He is neither a hero nor a celebrity, neither likeable nor engaging though he tries valiantly to rise to each description. Alas, yeast is wanting.
...
One way to make a schlemiel protagonist more genuinely tragic is to raise the stakes beyond the purely personal. The humiliations being avenged need to be more than private ones, and the scores being settled need to be not based on a tallying of unfairly received insults to one’s dignity. Hari Kunzru attempts in his novel Red Pill to dignify a failed hero by composing a plot where the ineffectual protagonist at least enters into a logomachy of sorts with daedal villains who are plotting for nothing less than a rejection of the democratic world order and the rules based system of international relations structured by political liberalism, economic liberalism, and liberal internationalism. In that breakdown novel the protagonist ends up involuntarily therapized and cured of his revolutionary instincts on account of being unable to manage his own life. But at least he has attempted to fight forces larger than himself. In Meiselman the protagonist’s ultimate crisis, his being passed over for the role of Director of Library Services, comes with no chastening to set him on the straight and narrow path out of loserdom. He has fought himself and failed. Landes is “standing up for him, when nobody else in the world will.” This reviewer remains uncomfortably seated.'

[Randy Dary]

This is about a Jewish fellow who is 2nd-in-charge of a large public library. I was glad to find this book and mostly enjoyed reading it, but toward the end I got kind of tired of the guy, frankly. The book is well-written, characters defined and flashed out, all good things, but Meiselman himself — for him, at first, I had sympathy, but he ends up where he does, which is not terrible, but because of who and what he is.
That probably makes this a truly good book, now that I think of it. The reader is right there with Meiselman, in his head. That makes it kind of “for better or for worse”, I guess.
I’m a WASP who finds Jewish writing very interesting. That’s why I said I was glad to find this book. Maybe the fact that I was at the same time finishing watching Seinfeld episodes, which I’d never seen before, created a bit of overload. I actually got sort of tired of them towards the end, also, and I think for the same reason: all the kvetching (?) and selfawareness and making mountains out of molehills. It’s funny until it’s not.
So, you should try this book, ok? Me, if this is part of a series, I’m not going to worry about the other books. One was enough.

[Jeff]

This book is fantastically conceived and expertly constructed. The long, dense chapters (each consisting of a day in the week of our eponymous protagonist) strike at the heart of Meiselman’s comically soul-sucking life, as he aches for the kind of reckoning wounded men such as himself search for in their lives. And it’s an absolute masterpiece in comic timing, as Avner Landes extends jokes, beyond what would be the breaking point for most writers, without managing to wear out his welcome. This book is a true marvel of literary engineering.

Whether the unlikable but sympathetic (or is it unsympathetic but likable) Meiselman riffs on Judaism, or sex, or childhood trauma, or Frank Thomas, it’s clear Landes understands the language of cringe, in that it’s less about being edgy and more about being relatable—it’s about making the reader’s shoulders creep upward as a very unwelcome form of sympathy seeps into their nerves, as they say to themselves, “Oh God—I’m not like this, am I?”

Insanely funny book.

[Jason Schwartzman]

I thought it was really, really funny. There were more than a few times I actually laughed out loud and as the chapters went on, I started texting some of the lines to a friend.

Meiselman’s head is a tortured place and I enjoyed his pained flavor of regular-life madness. That guy really could use a buddy to give him some perspective and just relax a touch, haha!

One of my favorite elements was all the fantasy sequences. They were innovative, super fun, and skillfully rendered.

This might just be me (and disclaimer I read these books ages ago) but in general, the book made me think of Lucky Jim with some Portnoy mixed in. I'm a big fan of both. Anyway, very glad I picked this one up.

[Adam King]

Was transported into a world and culture I’ve never experienced thru the eyes of Meiselman going thru trials and tribulations universal to anyone. Interspersed with comedic relief between serious moment of reflection and introspection, Meiselman is a reflection of the inner bull we keep caged inside us all with manners, protocol, and insecurity. Everyone either is or knows a Meiselman and Landes creates the ensemble of characters surrounding him to reflect the various attitudes towards the Meiselman in our lives while keeping a firm sense of place and atmosphere.

[Jack Houghteling]

Landes is uniquely equipped to concern himself (and thank heavens for the volunteers!), like Bellow was, with our multitude of faces. Why does our culture treat ego like property? Why do I treat my ego like property? Can language - finally! finally! - trace the essences and possibilities of the human soul, or is it going to remain a damned retail good? Are candor, good works and humanly depth possible (better yet, are they doable)? You never know how close Landes gets to any of these questions, which is where the comedic thew, the narrative wrath and excellence, the Carbon itself, lie.

[Marlene]

Weird and Depressing

Maybe if you are Jewish you think this book is funny? I can find no humor in having my “spotted underwear” examined by a Rabbi for some reason I could not fathom. Do they really do this? Perhaps the author could have explained more clearly what the purpose was...maybe then it would at least have meaning? As another reviewer wrote, I did not find this book funny. Full disclosure, I quit after about 100 pages. I have better books to spend my time on!

[Mark Henry]

I can picture Philip Roth reading this book, nodding along here and there, a chuckle slipping out every few pages. In Meiselman, Landes has created character with a mind like a freight car full of ticking watches, somehow none of them set to the correct time, hurtling down the tracks. Will it ease to smooth stop in the terminal or crash in a fiery wreck? And which would Meiselman prefer? Read and find out.

[Emily E.]

Stopped halfway. I thought this was supposed to be funny, but it was a horrible cringefest about a sociopath who sees himself as the victim in every situation, despite having exactly zero positive qualities as a human. Nope. Life is too short.

[Cheryl]

Super well written. You can feel the neurotic natural of the main character.