Shalom
Auslander came recommended to me for his first book, a collection
of stories called Beware of God, but it wasn’t
until I was amused by a column he wrote for the Guardian newspaper
that I realised I would like to read a book by him. Fortunately,
he published a memoir earlier this year, which goes by the unmistakable
title of Foreskin’s Lament. Is there something
he’s trying to get off his chest here?
As we might have guessed from his name and the titles,
Auslander’s subject is Judaism, or, I suppose, Jewishness.
The source of the book is neatly summed up in the first line of
the About the Author blurb: “Shalom Auslander was raised
as an Orthodox Jew in Spring Valley, New York.” And he’s
been living with the consequences ever since.
The people who raised me
will say that I’m not religious. They are mistaken. What
I am not is observant. But I am painfully, incurably, cripplingly,
miserably religious, and I have watched lately, dumbfounded
and distraught, as around the world, more and more people seem
to be finding Gods, each one more hateful and bloodthirsty than
the next, as I’m doing my best to lose him. I’m
failing miserably.
I believe in God.
It’s been a real
problem for me.
The book is apparently written over a period when
Auslander’s wife is pregnant with their first child, and
Auslander is writing stories (which will presumably become Beware
of God). His need to purge himself of the faith in which he was
raised, and his simultaneous inability to stop believing, form
the conflict which defines the book, and the author.
A few days ago, I resumed
work on my God stories. I’m pushing my luck, I know, but
if this child somehow lives, I want him or her to know where
I come from, why I haven’t taught him or her what they
taught me, why I have, as my mother put it in one of her last
ever emails to me, forsaken my people. I know that God knows
what I’ve written so far, and I know that He knows that
He’s coming off like an asshole - He also knows that it’s
only going to get worse before I am done, and He’s doing
everything He can to stop me from finishing. Killing me? Too
obvious. Murdering the very child for whom I’m writing
the book? That would be so God.
The problem with all this is that it’s difficult
to credit that Auslander really does have the unshakable (however
hard he tries) belief he claims to: if he does, then he hasn’t
conveyed it convincingly to the standard-issue postreligious reader.
And it becomes clear that there’s not much more to the book
than this constant double-hander of Auslander as God-fearer versus
Auslander as God-baiter.
That’s not quite true: there’s a fairly
upsetting portrayal of an out-of-control father (who may have
had his son’s blasphemous urges but sublimated them all
his life) and the book becomes moving toward the end, as Auslander
struggles over whether or not to give his newborn son the traditional
Jewish snip which gives the book its title. And even when his
anti-God arguments are simplistic (along the lines of Why do bad
things happen to good people?), he has a pithy way of putting
it.
Speaking of his sexual
desires, the poet Max Jacob wrote, —Heaven will pardon
me for the pleasures which it knows are involuntary. A few years
later, Heaven killed Max in a German concentration camp.
Still, despite these qualities, Foreskin’s
Lament seems over-long - it could easily have lost a third
of its 300 pages - and had that rare quality (technically known
as Michael Moore’s Syndrome) of vaguely irritating me even
though I was pretty much in agreement with its author. It does,
however, have the funniest acknowledgements page I’ve ever
seen. It’s headed Whom to Kill.
John
Self
To read more of John Self's book reviews, check
out his blog at
The Asylum.
Shalom
Auslander came recommended to me for his first book, a collection
of stories called Beware of God, but it wasn’t
until I was amused by a column he wrote for the Guardian newspaper
that I realised I would like to read a book by him. Fortunately,
he published a memoir earlier this year, which goes by the unmistakable
title of Foreskin’s Lament. Is there something
he’s trying to get off his chest here?