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A review by sam_bizar_wilcox
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
5.0
The Books of Jacob may well be remembered as Tokarczuk's greatest achievement. It is a massive novel, one that required years of research, and which spans a wide scope of 17th-century European history. It is also shockingly precise: there's very little that feels extraneous in this novel.
There will be, undoubtedly, criticism about the length of the novel. In a book so keenly interested in how ideas are generated and preserved, a book that also tracks the creation of an almanac and which explores the ways that literature depends on the tongue in which it is written, the colossal size feels more aligned with the central themes of the text. Which is, as is often the case with smart post-modern fiction, the text itself.
Ideas are problematized as they revolve around text. "In the beginning was the Word" becomes a controversial refrain, was the conflict between a sect of quasi-converted Jews and the Catholics in Poland. Where one group sees that statement as the end, the other (the central group of inter-devotional travelers) seems to attend to "the Word" in everything. The Word is not just creation, it is everything. Everything is mediated through language. Speech is converted from Hebrew to Turkish to Latin to Polish--all filtered, in this edition of the novel, through translation to English. The titular Jacob, whose name suggests that of the Jewish hero who quite literally wrestled with God, is a figure entirely devoted to reading religious traditions, and casting himself and his followers in roles as they accord to written or performed texts. In one scene, Jacob's followers are converted. Therefore, they must practice repeating their new Catholic names on the top of a mountain--they transform, through spoken repetition, their former Jewish identities into something other.
Language creates others in Tokarczuk's novel. Early in the book, one character is appalled at the idea that a book filled with contemporary folk wisdom be written for the Poles in Latin: "'which Poles, dear Father? Women, for example, rarely speak Latin, for they have frequently not been taught it. And the middle classes don't really know Latin at all [...].'" Here, language becomes an issue of access, where characters (and therefore, readers) must be carefully attuned to how information is shared, and to whom.
Thus introduces the Kabbala. What becomes a sort of conspiratorial throughline in the novel, even more than the title figure, Jacob, is the competing interests in elusive Jewish beliefs and the Zohar. Tokarczuk develops a very contemporary inquiry into the roots of antisemitism. Kabbala is something that is both revered, and, because of its inherent impenetrability, feared. Rumors of blood libel and ungodly alchemy swirl around the goyim as they gaze at this set of religious practices with unease. To understand requires knowledge of another language; everything is translation. Everything is corrupted by said translation. Cracks in meaning breed gossip and salacious rumors.
For all its ambition, The Books of Jacob can, too, be impenetrable. Just as text challenges its characters to read text and language, they must read one another. Family members face difficulty following and comprehending one another. The novel explores a variety of communicative ideas: talking, writing, glances, and sex. Yet, with the passage of time, characters slip away, change, or become translated to the point where they are no longer wholly recognizable as who they were at the beginning of their arc. Perhaps this is the challenge of humanity. Perhaps this is the challenge of the novel's scope.
Reading The Books of Jacob demands devotion. It, much like the texts that it so often alludes to, is a book that requires the reader to submit themself fully to the logic and space of the text. Once done, however, the experience of reading becomes an immensely rewarding one. If Tokarczuk may have been too ambitious for her own good, fair. Some ideas, narrative and linguistic, are left, by the end, less developed than others. But how remarkable is this book, regardless! Where Jacob Frank amasses followers, Tokarczuk does, too. Count me among her converts.
There will be, undoubtedly, criticism about the length of the novel. In a book so keenly interested in how ideas are generated and preserved, a book that also tracks the creation of an almanac and which explores the ways that literature depends on the tongue in which it is written, the colossal size feels more aligned with the central themes of the text. Which is, as is often the case with smart post-modern fiction, the text itself.
Ideas are problematized as they revolve around text. "In the beginning was the Word" becomes a controversial refrain, was the conflict between a sect of quasi-converted Jews and the Catholics in Poland. Where one group sees that statement as the end, the other (the central group of inter-devotional travelers) seems to attend to "the Word" in everything. The Word is not just creation, it is everything. Everything is mediated through language. Speech is converted from Hebrew to Turkish to Latin to Polish--all filtered, in this edition of the novel, through translation to English. The titular Jacob, whose name suggests that of the Jewish hero who quite literally wrestled with God, is a figure entirely devoted to reading religious traditions, and casting himself and his followers in roles as they accord to written or performed texts. In one scene, Jacob's followers are converted. Therefore, they must practice repeating their new Catholic names on the top of a mountain--they transform, through spoken repetition, their former Jewish identities into something other.
Language creates others in Tokarczuk's novel. Early in the book, one character is appalled at the idea that a book filled with contemporary folk wisdom be written for the Poles in Latin: "'which Poles, dear Father? Women, for example, rarely speak Latin, for they have frequently not been taught it. And the middle classes don't really know Latin at all [...].'" Here, language becomes an issue of access, where characters (and therefore, readers) must be carefully attuned to how information is shared, and to whom.
Thus introduces the Kabbala. What becomes a sort of conspiratorial throughline in the novel, even more than the title figure, Jacob, is the competing interests in elusive Jewish beliefs and the Zohar. Tokarczuk develops a very contemporary inquiry into the roots of antisemitism. Kabbala is something that is both revered, and, because of its inherent impenetrability, feared. Rumors of blood libel and ungodly alchemy swirl around the goyim as they gaze at this set of religious practices with unease. To understand requires knowledge of another language; everything is translation. Everything is corrupted by said translation. Cracks in meaning breed gossip and salacious rumors.
For all its ambition, The Books of Jacob can, too, be impenetrable. Just as text challenges its characters to read text and language, they must read one another. Family members face difficulty following and comprehending one another. The novel explores a variety of communicative ideas: talking, writing, glances, and sex. Yet, with the passage of time, characters slip away, change, or become translated to the point where they are no longer wholly recognizable as who they were at the beginning of their arc. Perhaps this is the challenge of humanity. Perhaps this is the challenge of the novel's scope.
Reading The Books of Jacob demands devotion. It, much like the texts that it so often alludes to, is a book that requires the reader to submit themself fully to the logic and space of the text. Once done, however, the experience of reading becomes an immensely rewarding one. If Tokarczuk may have been too ambitious for her own good, fair. Some ideas, narrative and linguistic, are left, by the end, less developed than others. But how remarkable is this book, regardless! Where Jacob Frank amasses followers, Tokarczuk does, too. Count me among her converts.