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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
I'm so disappointed by this book. The whole story takes place in a comedy club during a stand-up set, from the point of view of a childhood friend of the comedian who was asked to sit in the audience. Over the course of the night, the reader is given insight into their relationship and the kinds of choices they made, and how they ended up here.
Except stand up comedy is a medium that is characterized by tight, heavily rehearsed performances that respond to the crowd dynamically, and the comedian in this book is unfocused, going off on unfunny, stream-of-consciousness tangents for pages at a time, peppered with the occasional elementary school joke. The reactions of the audience feel stiff and confusing to me as a result.
I understand what this book is trying to do, but it feels like such a waste to use stand up as a frame for this narrative when every other contemporary novel just does crude stream-of-consciousness for the internal dialogue of their main characters anyway without the pretension.
It's also exhausting to read another novel where the main character sees the calf of a woman and is thrust into agony because it reminds him of his ex-wife.
Except stand up comedy is a medium that is characterized by tight, heavily rehearsed performances that respond to the crowd dynamically, and the comedian in this book is unfocused, going off on unfunny, stream-of-consciousness tangents for pages at a time, peppered with the occasional elementary school joke. The reactions of the audience feel stiff and confusing to me as a result.
I understand what this book is trying to do, but it feels like such a waste to use stand up as a frame for this narrative when every other contemporary novel just does crude stream-of-consciousness for the internal dialogue of their main characters anyway without the pretension.
It's also exhausting to read another novel where the main character sees the calf of a woman and is thrust into agony because it reminds him of his ex-wife.
A roller-coaster of a book. Elliptical, exaggerated, propulsive, full of a pain that seems headed straight for you the reader but then veers aside at the last second. It is difficult to tell if it is meant to be a kind of national epic or a shaggy dog story or a simple character study. Maybe all three.
A very effective book of alienation and guilt. I could feel them layered in from the beginning, and the reveal worked all the better for it.
I read this because it's on the Mann Booker Prize long list. It took a bit of work to get into it, but I'm glad I stuck with it. The book is like nothing else I've read. The plot construct is unusual - a stand up comic reaches back into his past one night during a show, and tells difficult stories from his childhood. Two friends from his youth are in the audience, and their reactions fill out the picture. Set in Israel. The characters were children who grew up there just after WWII.
Quick and devastating. I dare you to put the book down during the last 50 pages.
Update: a very worthy winner of the 2017 MBIP
What sort of obligation do I have towards someone who I went to private tutoring sessions with forty-something years ago? I'm giving him five more minutes, on the dot, and if there isn't any kind of plot twist, I'm leaving.
Book 12 from 13 of the Man Booker International longlist and I certainly saved one of the best till last.
Israeli author David Grossman is perhaps best known in English for his [b:To the End of the Land|7779571|To the End of the Land|David Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320401495s/7779571.jpg|10698979], translated by Jessica Cohen (a 3 star review from me), a long and emotionally resonant account of a mother who takes refuge in a long walk across the Galilean countryside when her son is called up to military service: this ensures the army officials can’t find her to notify her if anything happens to her son, and her effective belief is that this ensures his safety – if they can’t tell her then it can’t happen. The novel was given added poignancy by Grossman’s own son’s death in military service in Lebanon while he was completing the novel.
A Horse Walks Into a Bar, which has been longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International is very different in tone, although the re are some similarities in the underlying literary conceit and the comedy on the surface of this novel conceals tragedy and emotional depth underneath, as Grossman explained in a CBC radio interview.
'I should be explaining how I'm just so into being here with you on a Thursday evening in your charming industrial zone, and not just that but in a basement, practically touching the magnificent radon deposits while I pull a string of jokes out of my pass for your listening pleasure - correct?' 'Correct' the audience yells back. 'Incorrect,' the man asserts and rubs his hands together gleefully. 'It'a all a crook, except the pass bit, because I gotta be honest with you, I can't stand your city. I get creeped out by this Netanya dump. Every other person on the street looks like he's in the witness protection programme, and every other other person has the first person rolled up in a plastic plastic bag inside the trunk of his car. And believe me if I didn't have to pay alimony to three lovely women and child support for one-two-three-four-five kids.....'
The story is narrated by Avishai Lazar a senior judge: ’District, not Supreme. And anyway I'm retired.’ he retorts when Dovaleh G singles him out in the audience. He knew Dovaleh over 40 years ago, when they spend a summer in the same private maths tutorial class, but had not spoken to him since, until he receives a call out of the blue asking him to attend the gig:
’I want you to see me, really see my and then afterwards tell me.’
‘Tell you what?
‘What you saw’
As Dovaleh's act unfolds, we are party to Avishai's observations on the audience's reaction, his own thoughts, his emerging recollections of his friend from 40+ years ago, and his own personal issues.
From the outset Dovaleh’s act sways uneasily between traditional stand-up – improvised abuse of the audience and their city interspersed with hackneyed gags – and personal confession. When he drops into the latter, he tells the audience: ’Just pretend you know what I'm talking about, okay? Nice city, Netanyahu, nice city’ so often, it becomes a catchphrase that they join in with. He walks a tightrope between the two, trying to keep the audience with him while airing the personal confession he wants to make: The crowd laughs heartily and relaxes a little, sensing that somewhere out there a dangerous wrong turn has been righted.
Over the next 2 hours of the show and 200 pages of the novel, Dovaleh G's unspools his life in front of Avishai, the audience and the reader. The audience waver between being repulsed, bored, amused and intrigued, but it is the latter emotion that dominates for the reader.
Comedy is typically regarded as being more difficult to translate than poetry and that this novel works so well in English is testimony to the wonderful translation from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen. She explains some of the issues she faced - including the very first line of the novel - in an in-depth interview in the literary journal Asymptote.
In conclusion, I cannot resist quoting a wonderful line from Neil's review:
Definitely one for my shortlist, indeed I would be happy to see it win.
What sort of obligation do I have towards someone who I went to private tutoring sessions with forty-something years ago? I'm giving him five more minutes, on the dot, and if there isn't any kind of plot twist, I'm leaving.
Book 12 from 13 of the Man Booker International longlist and I certainly saved one of the best till last.
Israeli author David Grossman is perhaps best known in English for his [b:To the End of the Land|7779571|To the End of the Land|David Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320401495s/7779571.jpg|10698979], translated by Jessica Cohen (a 3 star review from me), a long and emotionally resonant account of a mother who takes refuge in a long walk across the Galilean countryside when her son is called up to military service: this ensures the army officials can’t find her to notify her if anything happens to her son, and her effective belief is that this ensures his safety – if they can’t tell her then it can’t happen. The novel was given added poignancy by Grossman’s own son’s death in military service in Lebanon while he was completing the novel.
A Horse Walks Into a Bar, which has been longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International is very different in tone, although the re are some similarities in the underlying literary conceit and the comedy on the surface of this novel conceals tragedy and emotional depth underneath, as Grossman explained in a CBC radio interview.
It takes some time after a trauma to start to be able to make fun of it...and yet it has a kind of a healing aspect to it, the fact that people are able to laugh again.Dovaleh G (G for Greenstein) is a 57-year stand-up comedian, and the novel consists of an account of a routine he performs one night in the city of Netanya.
'I should be explaining how I'm just so into being here with you on a Thursday evening in your charming industrial zone, and not just that but in a basement, practically touching the magnificent radon deposits while I pull a string of jokes out of my pass for your listening pleasure - correct?' 'Correct' the audience yells back. 'Incorrect,' the man asserts and rubs his hands together gleefully. 'It'a all a crook, except the pass bit, because I gotta be honest with you, I can't stand your city. I get creeped out by this Netanya dump. Every other person on the street looks like he's in the witness protection programme, and every other other person has the first person rolled up in a plastic plastic bag inside the trunk of his car. And believe me if I didn't have to pay alimony to three lovely women and child support for one-two-three-four-five kids.....'
The story is narrated by Avishai Lazar a senior judge: ’District, not Supreme. And anyway I'm retired.’ he retorts when Dovaleh G singles him out in the audience. He knew Dovaleh over 40 years ago, when they spend a summer in the same private maths tutorial class, but had not spoken to him since, until he receives a call out of the blue asking him to attend the gig:
’I want you to see me, really see my and then afterwards tell me.’
‘Tell you what?
‘What you saw’
As Dovaleh's act unfolds, we are party to Avishai's observations on the audience's reaction, his own thoughts, his emerging recollections of his friend from 40+ years ago, and his own personal issues.
From the outset Dovaleh’s act sways uneasily between traditional stand-up – improvised abuse of the audience and their city interspersed with hackneyed gags – and personal confession. When he drops into the latter, he tells the audience: ’Just pretend you know what I'm talking about, okay? Nice city, Netanyahu, nice city’ so often, it becomes a catchphrase that they join in with. He walks a tightrope between the two, trying to keep the audience with him while airing the personal confession he wants to make: The crowd laughs heartily and relaxes a little, sensing that somewhere out there a dangerous wrong turn has been righted.
Over the next 2 hours of the show and 200 pages of the novel, Dovaleh G's unspools his life in front of Avishai, the audience and the reader. The audience waver between being repulsed, bored, amused and intrigued, but it is the latter emotion that dominates for the reader.
Comedy is typically regarded as being more difficult to translate than poetry and that this novel works so well in English is testimony to the wonderful translation from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen. She explains some of the issues she faced - including the very first line of the novel - in an in-depth interview in the literary journal Asymptote.
In conclusion, I cannot resist quoting a wonderful line from Neil's review:
Last year's Man Booker winner was criticised by some because they felt it was a stand-up comedy show masquerading as a novel. This book is a novel masquerading as a stand-up comedy show.I was one of those who said this of last year's Man Booker winner, and Grossman's novel is a far superior work of literature.
Definitely one for my shortlist, indeed I would be happy to see it win.
Only 200 pages, but experienced as blunt trauma as if a much larger book had hit you about the head.
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes