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A review by marcnash21stc
A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman
3.0
I didn't like my first David Grossman book - [b:Be My Knife|60371|Be My Knife|David Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1170541653s/60371.jpg|2498858] and I can't say I enjoyed this one either, though it had a lot to recommend it.
A Jewish stand up comedian gives his last show, full of bile, self-loathing, contempt for himself and his audience, and guilt purely on his own account, though he does manage to also provoke it in a special guest he's asked to come and attend and comment on this his final show. An old school and army cadet friend he hasn't seen in 40 years, who has served as a judge but retired and who is recently widowed. This man is there as witness, confessor and yes, judge on the comic's act.
The remarkable achievement of this book is that Grossman manages to make it like an actual two-hour comedy show, pretty much in real time. The audience goes through the ebbs and flows, where a joke misfires, where another is a success, where the audience get annoyed because there is too much confessional story and not enough gags. We the reader feel almost exactly as the audience feel in real time as we read, their responses very much describe our own. And I think that is brave; when the audience are alienated or repulsed, so are we; When they walk out and leave, we ask ourselves whether it's worth our while staying on to read the book. I don't think the final revelation behind the comic's destructive guilt is weighty enough to grant satisfaction, but I did stay with it, unlike most of the audience who gave it up and were chalked off by the comic on his chalkboard on stage.
I thought parts of the book were derivative. Grossman cites Kafka, but actually this reminded me more of Camus' [b:The Fall|11991|The Fall|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467904855s/11991.jpg|3324245]. The stand up comedy stuff, that of the art of performing and manipulating an audience while also leaving them creative space, plus creating a character up on stage that is drawn from you but is not you and making that character highly vulnerable to the whims of the audience, I have read for real in the books by Stewart Lee such as [b:How I Escaped My Certain Fate|8538501|How I Escaped My Certain Fate|Stewart Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327175398s/8538501.jpg|13406028]. But one of the devices the comic as a child used to escape or neutralise real emotions, that of standing on his hands and moving upside down so as to invert the world, reminded me of a device in a Jack Rosenthal play called "The Barmitzvah Boy". So ultimately for me, this was a rather unremarkable story about Jewish guilt; Kafka's stories are for more ingenious and subtle.
So I don't think I'll be reading any more Grossman, as 0 for 2 is not a great strike rate. Even though this book won the 2017 International Pen Prize.
A Jewish stand up comedian gives his last show, full of bile, self-loathing, contempt for himself and his audience, and guilt purely on his own account, though he does manage to also provoke it in a special guest he's asked to come and attend and comment on this his final show. An old school and army cadet friend he hasn't seen in 40 years, who has served as a judge but retired and who is recently widowed. This man is there as witness, confessor and yes, judge on the comic's act.
The remarkable achievement of this book is that Grossman manages to make it like an actual two-hour comedy show, pretty much in real time. The audience goes through the ebbs and flows, where a joke misfires, where another is a success, where the audience get annoyed because there is too much confessional story and not enough gags. We the reader feel almost exactly as the audience feel in real time as we read, their responses very much describe our own. And I think that is brave; when the audience are alienated or repulsed, so are we; When they walk out and leave, we ask ourselves whether it's worth our while staying on to read the book. I don't think the final revelation behind the comic's destructive guilt is weighty enough to grant satisfaction, but I did stay with it, unlike most of the audience who gave it up and were chalked off by the comic on his chalkboard on stage.
I thought parts of the book were derivative. Grossman cites Kafka, but actually this reminded me more of Camus' [b:The Fall|11991|The Fall|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467904855s/11991.jpg|3324245]. The stand up comedy stuff, that of the art of performing and manipulating an audience while also leaving them creative space, plus creating a character up on stage that is drawn from you but is not you and making that character highly vulnerable to the whims of the audience, I have read for real in the books by Stewart Lee such as [b:How I Escaped My Certain Fate|8538501|How I Escaped My Certain Fate|Stewart Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327175398s/8538501.jpg|13406028]. But one of the devices the comic as a child used to escape or neutralise real emotions, that of standing on his hands and moving upside down so as to invert the world, reminded me of a device in a Jack Rosenthal play called "The Barmitzvah Boy". So ultimately for me, this was a rather unremarkable story about Jewish guilt; Kafka's stories are for more ingenious and subtle.
So I don't think I'll be reading any more Grossman, as 0 for 2 is not a great strike rate. Even though this book won the 2017 International Pen Prize.