You all know I like horrible, mean reviews, even if by bitter and possibly alcoholic critics. In fact that might even improve the final product. Two excellent examples came to my attention this week. First, Joe Galloway has a fantastically mean obituary for Robert McNamara – and a well deserved one to boot. McNamara's disgusting 40-year quest to fabricate history and absolve himself of Vietnam couldn't end quickly enough for me.
Second, if you read one thing today, read Harry Siegel's "Extremely Cloying & Incredibly False: Why the author of Everything Is Illuminated is a fraud and a hack." A friend in the publishing industry used to send me free books, and many years ago I received a copy of Everything is Illuminated. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I hated, hated, HATED that book. Well, the book itself I merely hated. The soccer-riot-like rush of critics fighting one another to suck his cock the hardest was what I truly hated. I can honestly say that some measurable portion of my incredible cynicism about American society is attributable to the public and critical reaction to Everything is Illuminated, and from what I have read (I dare not pick it up) his follow-up is even worse. But now that he has milked the Holocaust and 9/11 for two novels (or "novels") I suppose the world may be spared more writing from this shallow, talentless regurgitator of co-opted and affected styles until some other suitably obvious tragedy befalls us.
Unless, unbeknownst to any of us, he is currently hard at work on a novel about a sick orphaned puppy during the Holodomor. He is the literary (or "literary") equivalent of Tarantino, ham-fistedly pasting together bits and pieces of things he stole from other, better authors, with one notable difference: Tarantino made a couple of good movies amongst the insufferable ones.
J. Dryden says:
I suspect you may get more blowback from your comment about Tarantino–which has the quality of controversy among fanboys–than about either of the other two chuckleheads.
I'm not qualified to comment on McNamara's toxic legacy; though I know the broad outlines enough to convince me that the guy started off as a benighted douche who thought he was fighting the good fight against our Cold War enemies, only to degenerate into a proto-Nixonian douche more concerned about salvaging his own rep at the cost of many many horrible deaths, and then into a self-pitying douche whose late-in-life "my bad" trumped even George Wallace's in the too-little too-late category. Beyond that, the nuances–those details in which substantive truth resides, escape me, and I stand ready to be confirmed or corrected.
As for Foer, I'm reminded of the Onion article:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38746
The co-opting of the Holocaust as a Mad Libs version of Great Literature falls into the same category as those long-forgotten plans Disney had to build a theme park on Civil War battlefields. You can, by squinting, see that somewhere in there there's a good intention, but it comes at the cost of what amounts to graverobbing butchered millions for shiny nuggets of easy sentiment. (And frankly, to throw a literary bomb of my own, I'm about done with the equivalent in contemporary American literature: the use of The Slave Experience and The Native American Experience as more of the same. It's easy to find horror and suffering in places where such suffering was in such abundance as to reach the levels of dark comedy–seriously, if you don't recognize what's funny, genuinely *funny* about people so clueless as to think that cholera-infected blankets is sound public policy, you have no soul.)
My fiancee is Jewish–real, honest-to-God Israeli Jewish–and I am most decidedly *not* (I use the name John Dryden because I'm a descendant; if there's a whiter shade of pale, I'm it)–and we've had some knock-down fights about Holocaust "art"–my point, about which I've been unyielding, is that it needs to stop until someone, anyone, can find something *new* to say artistically about it, until someone can interpret it, see it, in a way that (pardon the pun) illuminates or realizes some aspect of that horrible time that has not already been done to death. Because frankly–and here's where the fights start–fictional Holocaust narratives bore the living shit out me. Because they're *all the same goddamned story*, told in *exactly* the same way. Innocent lives, followed by threats, followed by denials within the community of the possibility of the ultimate horror, followed by the infliction of the ultimate horror, followed by A. survival and a new sense of life's true meaning, or B. death and a new sense of life's true meaning. It's color-by-numbers art, and it's coming at the expense of millions of dead.
Why not let the event speak for itself? Why not honor the Holocaust by recognizing that great or even good art cannot come of it, because it defies subjective interpretation? Failing that–and I can see how some might object to that point of view–how about just holding off until your artistic response to it is something other than "Me too!"
The greatest artistic work to come of Vietnam was the Memorial, a simple statement of the simultaneous loss and presence of the dead. Nothing else–the war was, in the end, nothing more than the loss of lives. Heart stopping, and if you ever walk the mall in Washington, that's the place where you see people break down–where *you* break down–after all of the soaring emotions evoked by Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln and FDR. Let the record of the Holocaust–the real record–be the art. Otherwise, the vultures like Foer will make themselves and us feel "good" and "right" about it because we get nice and weepy, transforming the 20th-Century's ultimate act of horror (and it had a lot of competitors in that category) into emotional pornography.
Long ramble; my apologies.
Maren says:
I think I will love Harry Siegel forever for calling Lahiri brilliant and Eggers "anything but."
re: Holocaust fiction, I remember being struck by Ebert's review of The Pianist in which he said that the movie recognized that there is generally no meaning in any Holocaust survivor's story except the sheer blind luck of having lived. The meandering, serendipitous escape that the protagonist in that movie makes, coupled with Maus's portrayal of the hard-nosed, blinkered determination which got another man through, is about all the story I need at this point about that tragedy.
nicolien says:
I hated Everything is Illuminated, but love Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close so much that I couldn't read anything else for weeks.
Anyway, I don't think we can really blame the author for "The soccer-riot-like rush of critics fighting one another to suck his cock the hardest", can we?
D.N. Nation says:
Describes my relationship with Kid A perfectly.
Amelia says:
Oh, nicolien, I for one think we can blame Foer himself for "The soccer-riot-like rush (etc)". He panders to the pseudo-intellectual, self-applauding, "sensitive" hipster douchebag population with the precision of a marketing agent. Blech.
Charles says:
Sometimes authors use a novel or screenplay to support political or social beliefs; or to cry out for morality and ethical prinicples. This is no more clearly evident than with Holocaust books and films. Whenever we stand up to those who deny or minimize the Holocaust, or to those who support genocide we send a critical message to the world.
We live in an age of vulnerability. Holocaust deniers ply their mendacious poison everywhere, especially with young people on the Internet. We know from captured German war records that millions of innocent Jews (and others) were systematically exterminated by Nazi Germany – most in gas chambers. Holocaust books and films help to tell the true story of the Shoah, combating anti-Semitic historical revision. And, they protect future generations from making the same mistakes.
I wrote "Jacob's Courage" to promote Holocaust education. This coming of age love story presents accurate scenes and situations of Jews in ghettos and concentration camps, with particular attention to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. It examines a constellation of emotions during a time of incomprehensible brutality. A world that continues to allow genocide requires such ethical reminders and remediation.
Many authors feel compelled to use their talent to promote moral causes. Holocaust books and movies carry that message globally, in an age when the world needs to learn that genocide is unacceptable. Such authors attempt to show the world that religious, racial, ethnic and gender persecution is wrong; and that tolerance is our progeny's only hope.
Charles Weinblatt
Author, "Jacob's Courage"
Jon Grayson, Esq. says:
So you wrote a work of fiction set against a factual backdrop to promote acceptance of non-fictional history? Me thinks you doth protest too much. There's nothing wrong with writing a book of the sort you did, just don't pretend its a direct result of some crusade against the 0.0001% of the people on earth denying the Holocaust. If that was truly your goal, you would have been hitting the historical libraries and records for primary source records and literature for a work of pure logic, reason, and rationality that would have hopefully hit the non-fiction shelves with great aplomb. In fact, if I WAS a holocaust denier (not that one would read such a book), they would only feel more validated in their belief based on the romatnically-based appeals to emotion and sentimentality.
There's a big difference between authors using a work to "cry out for moral or ethical beliefs," and awareness of objective historical events with heavy moral conotations. Holocaust deniers may be a manifestation of stunted "moral and ethical beliefs," but if one's goal with a book is to fight back against that, historical fiction would be a pretty crappy medium to accomplish that.
I have no problem with your book by itself, there's a place for its existence in the literary world, I just disagree with you over what that place is apparently. For combating Holocaust denial, we already have plenty of existing first-person Holocaust narratives that are dramatic, touching, emotinoal, and TRUE. I think Elie Weisel and Anne Frank might agree.
Ashley says:
Crazy that this is your NPF – I just finished reading that book last week, and I've been trying to find any, ANY of my friends who have read it so they could share their opinions of it with me. Thanks for doing all the work for me!
This won't be popular here, I'm guessing, but I actually really liked parts of the book. I stress the word "parts". I liked the shifting narratives, and I liked the way they interacted with each other. I liked (though I know lots of people didn't) the Borat-esque English of the Alex character.
But. Foer was clearly trying pretty hard to be deep and overly cute. And the story was pretty meh. Plus, wading through four pages of effusive praise to even start the damn book was sort of annoying.
Siegel's review was pretty great. But the real treat is the commenting of the angry 'hipster douchebags" sulking over his review.
jazzbumpa says:
Grayson –
Damn, man – that's harsh. In your first sentence you denigrate not only Weinblatt and his book (about whom and which I know absolutely nothing) but the entire genre of historical fiction. To me, that is protesting a bit too much.
And you accuse the guy of pretending things, and misrepresenting his goal, as if you have any specific insight. A bit presumptuous, no?
And who is to say that any variety of fiction is a crappy medium to accomplish objective awareness of any aspect of the real world?
Maybe you should have this conversation with Dickens.
beau says:
jazzbumpa – harsh? perhaps. justified? definitely. a quick look at the sites of Weinblatt & his "publisher" will show you that this is a Jewish author, writing about Jewish characters, published by a Jewish (vanity) publisher (that stridently promotes a Jewish view of history & the world in general) for a Jewish audience. He's clearly preaching to the Synagogue.
And all that is just fine. But in claiming that he is trying to 'educate' and fight holocaust denial this author is either purposely misrepresenting himself and his work, or in a state of total self-delusion.
And as for the McNamara obit. – damn, I'd like to shake that hippie's hand…
Jon Grayson says:
Well, I'm sure this shocks you jazz, but I think youre actually misrepresenting what i said.
I didn't denigrate historical fiction at all, I'm a fan myself. My point was that if you had a friend who was a Civil War denier, would your first reaction be to hand him a Jeff Shaara book? That would be about #1,238 of the things I'd recommend to him/her to change their mind in my book, hence my "crappy medium" comment. If you wrote a book specifically for the goal of educating a Civil War denier, would you write a book of historical fiction like Shaara? Yes, the premise is absurd, but I think my point is alot clearer without the emotional baggage associated with the word Holocaust.
However, if you had a friend who was already interested in the Civil War, but wanted to see it from a fresh & interesting perspective, I'd say hell yeah pick up Shaara. But, that wasn't his goal. His own words:
"Holocaust books and films help to tell the true story of the Shoah, combating anti-Semitic historical revision. And, they protect future generations from making the same mistakes."
Did I misrepresent that? I don't think I did. If so, apologies.
Desargues says:
…"And, they protect future generations from making the same mistakes.” Bad grammar aside, this sentence is flat out false. Thinking hard — even collectively — about one attempted genocide has done nothing to prevent several other, equally atrocious, attempts in other parts of the world. I offer you Bangladesh, 1971; Timor Leste, 1975 and after; Rwanda, 1992-1994; and the former Yugoslavia, in the mid-1990s. We've been sanctimoniously telling each other that, after Auschwitz, not only will poetry be impossible, as Adorno had claimed, but also another genocide. Yet the West stood by while non-Whites were hacking each other to death with machetes and other primitive weaponry. I guess not all genocides are created equal; sand negroes appear to have less of a claim to our protection and outrage.
The first part of that paragraph — "combating anti-Semitic historical revision[ism]" — is also generally false: books and movies may work to stir public indignation when some wackos in the West (a population of a mere 0.0001% among us, as Mr Grayson astutely points out) feebly attempt to minimize or deny it. But these products are blatantly ineffective in the Muslim Middle East, for instance, where Holocaust deniers are in the millions, and where state propaganda and education outfits spout off the most abominable canards about Jews. The continued making of movies and books about the Holocaust will do very little to change these people's minds; in fact, some of them see it as clear evidence of the all-powerful reach of the "global Jewish cabal." What's required to stop these deluded lunatics and open their eyes is not more books and movies — but resolute, firm pressure by Western governments upon the local thugs running these countries to stop using Israel as the red herring of choice to deflect the anger of an oppressed, impoverished population. But who am I kidding. The temptation of sweet light crude and a misguided belief in "regional stability" will prevent most Western countries from slapping these motherfuckers over the head, as they deserve.
Prudence says:
Desargues, you missed one: Burma.
Desargues says:
Oh, yes, thank you. And also Darfur. And the other, silent genocide: Congo. And other atrocities against humanity — people killed simply because of their membership in a group, even though it's not an ethnic genos, like in genocides: the fifty million or so casualties of Communism and Fascism everywhere after the Second World War; the dead of Lebanon's civil war; Sri Lanka; Cambodia. I could go on, but it's too dispiriting to continue.
jazzbumpa says:
Grayson –
Yes, yes. Shocked. Perhaps I misunderstood, and I certainly had no background on Charles or his book. But if I misrepersented, that was an accident, and I apologize. I should have focused more on your third paragraph and less on the first – which actually still looks pretty harsh on a reread.
You civil war examples stake out two extreme and opposed positions. I was thinking of a broader middle ground. If someone without an ax to grind – say me for example – were to read Charles' book, there is a chance I would learn something, and perhaps be enlightened by the experience.
nicolien says:
Desargues – I would be careful to say that in the Middle East there are 'Holocaust deniers … in the millions'. Most people here do not deny the Holocaust happened – they just don't see it as the Absolute Biggest Evil Ever, what with all the other massacres mentioned above that happened after that.
Not according it the 'proper' historic significance (whatever that is) is not the same as denying it.
Desargues says:
Point taken, nicolien. Maybe they don't deny it, and I can see why one would disagree with the rankings on the Biggest Evils Evah scale, especially when one self-servingly uses this ranking to justify the occasional neo-colonialist policy.
But surely you'll give me that the number of Middle Easterners maintaining that the Jews "had it coming" or that Hitler "did the right thing" is in the millions, if not larger. Denying this atrocity is not the only moral failure possible here.
waldo says:
I'm glad I can stop hating McNamara.