Though all of Elkin's work is saturated with Jewish-American, Yiddish-tinged rhythms, few of his novels are explicitly, centrally Jewish in character and theme. This new book is extravagantly ethnic and blissfully sectarian, as Elkin drapes grotesque tall tales, baroque spiels, and irreverent parodies around a jaunty narrator: Jerry Goldkorm, a "pickup rabbi, God's little Hebrew stringer in New Jersey." Jerry, you see, is Rabbi of Lud, a tiny north N.J. town that exists only to service nearby Jewish cemetaries; congregationless, Jerry is employed by the local funeral home. In the novel's first, best section, delivered in a rambling monologue that mixes the profane, the preachy ("I'm speaking in my rabbi mode here"), and the grimly hilarious, Jerry reveals his weak academic past, his iffy command of Hebrew, and shares arcane, super-orthodox strictures. ("According to some interpretations of Talmud, a man may be denied his place with God if he can lift three times his own body weight.") He testily addresses God by funny names—tit for tat; details his ever-blazing lust for wife Shelley, who gets turned on by phylacteries and talks in babyish pidgin Yiddish; and frets about daughter Constance, 14, who's fed up with the morbidity and isolation of Lud. ("Daddy, our back yard is a cemetary!") Then, in a 90-page digression, Jerry recalls his year ('74-75) as Chief Rabbi of the Alaska Pipeline. There's a wayward plane trip, a wilderness-survival ordeal (featuring a dandy parody of outdoorsy uplift), and a surreal encounter with "an old Jew with a beard made out of flowers." More amusingly, there are tales of Jerry's weird success as Chief Rabbi, using reverse-psychology to draw crowds (largely non-Jewish) to Shavuoth services. The novel's final section returns to Lud—where Constance claims to have had a cemetary visit from none other than the Holy Mother, come "to rescue the poor lost souls of righteous Jews." (Holy Mother's drawl is half yenta, half Butterfly McQueen.) Constance's vision becomes an embarrassment, of course—to the funeral home (which is having money problems, anyway) and to the Rabbi, who's dabbling in adultery and real-estate salesmanship. Like most of Elkin's novels, this is episodic, disjointed, and unshapely. The verbal shenanigans (unwieldly parentheses, paragraph-long sentences, rococo riffs) occasionally get out of hand. But, though Rabbi Jerry isn't a fully credible or coherent character, his narration—loose, angry, half-hip, half. cloddish—gives the book a center. The combination of favorite Elkin themes—mortality, theology-ad-absurdum, hucksterism—generates loopy, creepily memorable vignettes. And while only a limited audience will appreciate all the layers of intensely allusive humor here, this is a bouncy, zestily outrageous comeback from The Magic Kingdom.
Pub Date: Oct. 14, 1987
ISBN: 1564782700
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1987
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Hoffman (The Red Garden, 2011, etc.) births literature from tragedy: the destruction of Jerusalem's Temple, the siege of Masada and the loss of Zion.
This is a feminist tale, a story of strong, intelligent women wedded to destiny by love and sacrifice. Told in four parts, the first comes from Yael, daughter of Yosef bar Elhanan, a Sicarii Zealot assassin, rejected by her father because of her mother's death in childbirth. It is 70 CE, and the Temple is destroyed. Yael, her father, and another Sicarii assassin, Jachim ben Simon, and his family flee Jerusalem. Hoffman's research renders the ancient world real as the group treks into Judea's desert, where they encounter Essenes, search for sustenance and burn under the sun. There too Jachim and Yael begin a tragic love affair. At Masada, Yael is sent to work in the dovecote, gathering eggs and fertilizer. She meets Shirah, her daughters, and Revka, who narrates part two. Revka's husband was killed when Romans sacked their village. Later, her daughter was murdered. At Masada, caring for grandsons turned mute by tragedy, Revka worries over her scholarly son-in-law, Yoav, now consumed by vengeance. Aziza, daughter of Shirah, carries the story onward. Born out of wedlock, Aziza grew up in Moab, among the people of the blue tunic. Her passion and curse is that she was raised as a warrior by her foster father. In part four, Shirah tells of her Alexandrian youth, the cherished daughter of a consort of the high priests. Shirah is a keshaphim, a woman of amulets, spells and medicine, and a woman connected to Shechinah, the feminine aspect of God. The women are irretrievably bound to Eleazar ben Ya'ir, Masada's charismatic leader; Amram, Yael's brother; and Yoav, Aziza's companion and protector in battle. The plot is intriguingly complex, with only a single element unresolved. An enthralling tale rendered with consummate literary skill.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1747-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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