Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
Some people buy refrigerator magnets when they travel. I buy books. What better way to understand a country than by reading books from its authors?
A trip to Israel last week happened to coincide with the the International Man Booker Prize being awarded to Israeli author David Grossman's "A Horse Walks into a Bar". I'd never read Grossman before, but being that I was in Israel I gave into the hype and plopped down the most money I've ever spent on a (rather slim) novel.
Here are the three things I've come away with since then.
1. Israel's expensive.
2. This book is VERY Israeli
3. I don't believe the book lives up to the hype
The first point is clear enough. Whether eating out or buying books, Israel is right up there with Iceland and Norway as the most expensive countries in which to do so.
I'm going to put the second and third points together here and say that my not being Israeli or having a firm grasp of Israeli politics - other than what gets covered on the nightly news - might have somewhat hindered my enjoyment of "A Horse Walks into a Bar".
It's worth mentioning that David Grossman is a liberal quick to point the finger at the Israeli government for the problems the country faces. The international community is no doubt pleased by this, and this pleasure apparently makes up for certain qualities Grossman's novel lacks.
This is a "gimmick" novel of sorts, in that the book's 198 pages take place entirely over two hours, with the caveat that our narrator - a retired Israeli judge - is fond of the occasional flashback. These two hours take place in a comedy club where we take on the role of audience to a stand-up act.
Now, I'm not generally a fan of stand-up comedy, certainly not the type of "comedy" performed by the act featured in this book, so I was somewhat trepidatious about reading a book about one stand-up comic's act.
A disclaimer then: this book is not funny. Not even in the slightest. Sure, there are jokes about blondes and men trapped on deserted islands wanting to fuck goats, but the overall tone of the book is never not "grim".
All of this is fine. I somewhat enjoy the concept of many "gimmick" novels, even if I've never read one that I ultimately really enjoyed.
I would most closely relate this one to Herman Koch's "The Dinner". That Dutch novel - set over the course of a dinner at a fine-dining restaurant - had me enraptured from start to-almost finish but ultimately collapsed at the end like an undercooked soufflé.
"A Horse Walks into a Bar" is worse than that because we don't have to wait until the-almost finish for things to start to disintegrate. I could recapitulate the story here, but there isn't really much in the way of a story to recapitulate.
Instead of telling jokes, a stand-up comic named Dovaleh gets up on stage in a bar in the Israeli town of Netanya and opens up about a traumatic event from his childhood like he's talking to a shrink.
Three things to note here.
1. The supposed comic's main bit is to denigrate the town and people of Netanya, which he makes out to be some kind of backwater akin to Riverview, Florida. I didn't go to Netanya during my stay which I guess is ... a good thing? Though I wouldn't trust anything this stand-up comic says, being that he's clearly in need of therapy.
Being a non-Israeli who had never heard of Netanya before, I immediately thought of Netanyahu. Is this Grossman's way of taking a not-too-subtle dig at the current Israeli Prime Minister?
2. If I had been in the audience, I would have gotten up and left after 20 minutes. I would have HATED Dovaleh's entire act. That most of the crowd sticks with him until around the hour and a half mark required some suspension of disbelief on my part. Although, to be fair, the Jewish people do have a well-documented history of enduring suffering.
3. This is probably the least interesting therapy session ever put to print. The event in his childhood that Dovaleh takes so long building up to just isn't that significant to my mind. Perhaps I just lacked compassion for the comic (I did), but WHO CARES? You had a difficult relationship with your father? Step right up and join the club, pal!
I think Grossman is going for something "Kite Runner"-esque here. We are supposed to empathize with the guilt of a supposed friend, that'd be our narrator, for not stepping in and doing more to help his alienated little buddy.
In "The Kite Runner" such guilt was warranted and beautifully rendered. We recognized it and suffered with our narrator. Here it just doesn't seem worthy of our attention.
This is pretty much becoming my two-word synopsis of this book, but WHO CARES? Why should we care? The event in question just doesn't seem all that traumatic.
Children lose parents. Children get bullied. While sad, none of this is unusual.
Sure sure, I'm ignoring all the politics underlying the narrative - all the "insightful" political commentary about Arabs at border checks and curfews and all.
Coming from a character that I so disliked, that'd be our stand-up comic, none of these very brief mentions of complicated issues resonated with me. They're not discussed with the depth needed to warrant any greater reflection, just joked about.
This was an interesting read, but in the end I couldn't help but envy all those audience members who got up and left before the act was over.
They didn't miss anything.
A trip to Israel last week happened to coincide with the the International Man Booker Prize being awarded to Israeli author David Grossman's "A Horse Walks into a Bar". I'd never read Grossman before, but being that I was in Israel I gave into the hype and plopped down the most money I've ever spent on a (rather slim) novel.
Here are the three things I've come away with since then.
1. Israel's expensive.
2. This book is VERY Israeli
3. I don't believe the book lives up to the hype
The first point is clear enough. Whether eating out or buying books, Israel is right up there with Iceland and Norway as the most expensive countries in which to do so.
I'm going to put the second and third points together here and say that my not being Israeli or having a firm grasp of Israeli politics - other than what gets covered on the nightly news - might have somewhat hindered my enjoyment of "A Horse Walks into a Bar".
It's worth mentioning that David Grossman is a liberal quick to point the finger at the Israeli government for the problems the country faces. The international community is no doubt pleased by this, and this pleasure apparently makes up for certain qualities Grossman's novel lacks.
This is a "gimmick" novel of sorts, in that the book's 198 pages take place entirely over two hours, with the caveat that our narrator - a retired Israeli judge - is fond of the occasional flashback. These two hours take place in a comedy club where we take on the role of audience to a stand-up act.
Now, I'm not generally a fan of stand-up comedy, certainly not the type of "comedy" performed by the act featured in this book, so I was somewhat trepidatious about reading a book about one stand-up comic's act.
A disclaimer then: this book is not funny. Not even in the slightest. Sure, there are jokes about blondes and men trapped on deserted islands wanting to fuck goats, but the overall tone of the book is never not "grim".
All of this is fine. I somewhat enjoy the concept of many "gimmick" novels, even if I've never read one that I ultimately really enjoyed.
I would most closely relate this one to Herman Koch's "The Dinner". That Dutch novel - set over the course of a dinner at a fine-dining restaurant - had me enraptured from start to-almost finish but ultimately collapsed at the end like an undercooked soufflé.
"A Horse Walks into a Bar" is worse than that because we don't have to wait until the-almost finish for things to start to disintegrate. I could recapitulate the story here, but there isn't really much in the way of a story to recapitulate.
Instead of telling jokes, a stand-up comic named Dovaleh gets up on stage in a bar in the Israeli town of Netanya and opens up about a traumatic event from his childhood like he's talking to a shrink.
Three things to note here.
1. The supposed comic's main bit is to denigrate the town and people of Netanya, which he makes out to be some kind of backwater akin to Riverview, Florida. I didn't go to Netanya during my stay which I guess is ... a good thing? Though I wouldn't trust anything this stand-up comic says, being that he's clearly in need of therapy.
Being a non-Israeli who had never heard of Netanya before, I immediately thought of Netanyahu. Is this Grossman's way of taking a not-too-subtle dig at the current Israeli Prime Minister?
2. If I had been in the audience, I would have gotten up and left after 20 minutes. I would have HATED Dovaleh's entire act. That most of the crowd sticks with him until around the hour and a half mark required some suspension of disbelief on my part. Although, to be fair, the Jewish people do have a well-documented history of enduring suffering.
3. This is probably the least interesting therapy session ever put to print. The event in his childhood that Dovaleh takes so long building up to just isn't that significant to my mind. Perhaps I just lacked compassion for the comic (I did), but WHO CARES? You had a difficult relationship with your father? Step right up and join the club, pal!
I think Grossman is going for something "Kite Runner"-esque here. We are supposed to empathize with the guilt of a supposed friend, that'd be our narrator, for not stepping in and doing more to help his alienated little buddy.
In "The Kite Runner" such guilt was warranted and beautifully rendered. We recognized it and suffered with our narrator. Here it just doesn't seem worthy of our attention.
This is pretty much becoming my two-word synopsis of this book, but WHO CARES? Why should we care? The event in question just doesn't seem all that traumatic.
Children lose parents. Children get bullied. While sad, none of this is unusual.
Sure sure, I'm ignoring all the politics underlying the narrative - all the "insightful" political commentary about Arabs at border checks and curfews and all.
Coming from a character that I so disliked, that'd be our stand-up comic, none of these very brief mentions of complicated issues resonated with me. They're not discussed with the depth needed to warrant any greater reflection, just joked about.
This was an interesting read, but in the end I couldn't help but envy all those audience members who got up and left before the act was over.
They didn't miss anything.
A quick, distressing read. The story moved frustratingly slow at certain points, which felt intentional and didn't bother me. However, the general narrative was a bit disjointed. I thoroughly enjoyed Dov's narrative and watching his behavior, but at times, I couldn't quite place myself in the same mindset as the narrator, the audience, or the comedian. I also know that some detail was lost on me since I am not as familiar with Israel as I should have been before picking up this book (which is not the book's fault).
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A 57 year old man performs a stand up comedy routine, mixing the story of his life and jokes of all sorts. Desperate, profane and compelling, he sweeps up his audience and the reader. As someone who finds watching stand up comedy anxiety-provoking to start with, this was a harrowing story and a writing tour de force.
The book recounts an entire stand up comedy show from beginning to end. Within the show, interspersed with jokes, is the story of what happened to the comedian when he went to cadet camp as a child. We hear this story both from his point of view and from the point of view of a childhood friend (the book's narrator), whom the comedian has phoned up out of the blue and invited to attend the show. It turns out that the narrator was at the same army camp and has his own memories of the incident. We therefore see the whole comedy show from his perspective and also from the perspective of the show's audience, whose reactions are referred to both by the narrator and the comedian himself. There is a constant tension throughout the book, will the audience, including the narrator, stay for the whole show, and how much of the comedian's inner darkness can he show without alienating the audience. Like them, the reader, is drawn into feeling, do I like this book, or is it too intense, too grotesque, too pitiful? Am I going to put it down or stay with it? I stayed with it and ended up loving it.
Once again David Grossman reveals his genius for creating hugely affecting and yet appalling characters. The premise is quite simple. The narrator (court judge Avishai Lazar) has been invited to watch a stand-up performance by a man he briefly knew as a boy. This performance, recorded “verbatim” along with reactions from the audience and reminiscences by the narrator. As the show develops it becomes increasingly and intensely personal as the comic relates a painful event from his childhood. Sometimes he plays this for laughs with the blackest of humour but increasingly loses his hold on his comedy and his audience. It is a slow but inevitable collapse of a routine and a man. Simple, yes, but easy? No. There are very few writers with the vision and the control necessary to make such a narrative a success but Grossman is one of them.
There were times when I hated this book. I hated the crassness of many of the jokes, the casual prejudice, a deep unpleasantness in the way Dovaleh Greenstein plays the tragedy and cruelty of the Arab-Israeli conflict for cheap laughs and thinks nothing of stooping to the lowest common denominator. But this is precisely where Grossman’s talent shines because it is a pitch-perfect rendering of the best and worst of stand-up comedy with all the pitfalls and pratfalls laid bare. After all there is something deeply (if not always commendably) human in our capacity to make a (bad) joke out of anything. Anything for a laugh.
One Grossman’s great talents is his facility for placing the ridiculous and the painful side by side so that both are heart-breaking. By interspersing the sometimes humorous often uncomfortable ranting of Davoleh and his sudden bursts of self-contempt and violence, with the memories of his former friend and current audience-member we form a complex picture of a deeply flawed man. It is natural to despise him but Grossman won’t let you rest on that, he will not let you take the easy way out. As he spins out the story of his life the unpleasantness of his character and manner become less about a person and more about the tragedy of lives spoilt by conflict and propaganda and a context which seeks to destroy the ability to feel compassion and empathy. Davoleh is a product of his surroundings and his experience and that is the really tragic joke.
“How did [Davoleh] do that?” Lazar wonders at one point “How, in such a short time, did he manage to turn the audience, even me to some extent, into household members of his soul? And into his hostages?”. One might wonder the same about Grossman who can push and prod you to the very edge of giving up in disgust and always reel you back in
There were times when I hated this book. I hated the crassness of many of the jokes, the casual prejudice, a deep unpleasantness in the way Dovaleh Greenstein plays the tragedy and cruelty of the Arab-Israeli conflict for cheap laughs and thinks nothing of stooping to the lowest common denominator. But this is precisely where Grossman’s talent shines because it is a pitch-perfect rendering of the best and worst of stand-up comedy with all the pitfalls and pratfalls laid bare. After all there is something deeply (if not always commendably) human in our capacity to make a (bad) joke out of anything. Anything for a laugh.
One Grossman’s great talents is his facility for placing the ridiculous and the painful side by side so that both are heart-breaking. By interspersing the sometimes humorous often uncomfortable ranting of Davoleh and his sudden bursts of self-contempt and violence, with the memories of his former friend and current audience-member we form a complex picture of a deeply flawed man. It is natural to despise him but Grossman won’t let you rest on that, he will not let you take the easy way out. As he spins out the story of his life the unpleasantness of his character and manner become less about a person and more about the tragedy of lives spoilt by conflict and propaganda and a context which seeks to destroy the ability to feel compassion and empathy. Davoleh is a product of his surroundings and his experience and that is the really tragic joke.
“How did [Davoleh] do that?” Lazar wonders at one point “How, in such a short time, did he manage to turn the audience, even me to some extent, into household members of his soul? And into his hostages?”. One might wonder the same about Grossman who can push and prod you to the very edge of giving up in disgust and always reel you back in
I'm definitely in the minority with this one, it just didn't do what it did for others, for me.
While I can appreciate the structure of this novel and the themes explored I found myself bored for the majority of the book, and while I enjoyed the ending it wasn't enjoyable enough for me to rate it anything higher than 3 stars.
While I can appreciate the structure of this novel and the themes explored I found myself bored for the majority of the book, and while I enjoyed the ending it wasn't enjoyable enough for me to rate it anything higher than 3 stars.
What is entertainment? When an artist or a creative makes art based on personal life struggles and pain, what am I doing by purchasing or viewing that art? Am I signaling that the pain is okay? As the comedian of the novel pushes his audience to uncomfortable places so too does the author push his reader to uncomfortable places.
I won't be able to stop thinking about this book for years to come. I know I'll keep wondering why I kept reading the novel as my discomfort grew and grew.
I won't be able to stop thinking about this book for years to come. I know I'll keep wondering why I kept reading the novel as my discomfort grew and grew.