I don't read a lot of mainstream fiction. If I'm not reading for school (classics of different stripes), Milton, or Shakespeare, I'm going to be spending my time and energy reading and writing fantasy novels. I dabble in science fiction when I get the itch, though a lot of that is better for mein the video game section.
But one thing that is a guaranteed "Shut up and take my money!" proposition is the Hogarth Press Shakespeare imprint and their plan to flood the world with modern novels that retell Shakespearean plays. I've already talked a bit about these books, but I finally finished the first one I've purchased, Shylock Is My Name, and I wanted to sound off on it for a little bit.
First of all, I have to give credit to Howard Jacobson. As I said, I don't read a lot of mainstream fiction, so it's unusual for me to get "writerly" prose out of what I read. With the exception, perhaps, of Patrick Rothfuss, fantasy as a genre isn't as concerned about the words-on-the-page, lyrical quality that writers bring to the craft. This isn't to say they don't write well, they just don't focus on the sentence level beauty as much. Sure, there are exceptions (I already mentioned one), but my experience has been that the language ought to be straightforward and clear--that it ought not to obfuscate the story in any way. There's nothing wrong with that, but since that's my default reading setup, it's a powerful change of pace to read a book by someone who obviously puts a lot of care into his sentences, dialogue, and descriptions. Jacobson writes powerful prose that is equal parts smooth and sharp, like glass. While I don't know that I love this style of writing, it is so different from what I usually take in, I can't help but appreciate it, if only for the variety alone.
Additionally, Jacobson--as all these authors who are participating in this project will have to do--is telling a story that we already know about (in this case, unsurprisingly, The Merchant of Venice) and is updating it. Shylock Is My Name has been moved out of Venice and into contemporary England, which means that it's going into a land that has had a long history of antisemitism but also a country and time set in a post-Holocaust world. These contradictory factors are one of many paradoxes that Jacobson explores--who is, himself, Jewish--and is one of the reasons for my reaction to the book.
So far as the story goes, it's fairly familiar: The stand-in characters all have fairly easy to recognize parallels from the play (Portia is Plurabelle, Antonio is D'Anton, Shylock is Strulovich) and they have motivations that are gleaned from the source material. What's strange, however, is the fact that this is not only a post-Holocaust world: It's also post-Shakespearean. The characters quote from the other plays, they mention the Bard in passing...and Shylock is a character of the book. Not a person named Shylock, but the actual character. Strulovich speaks with Shylock, referring to Shylock's history as understood within the play. Questions about how Shylock loved Leah (mentioned, but never seen, in the source material) and grew to hate Jessica (Shylock's daughter) aren't subtext--they're actual conversation pieces.
This is where I struggled with the book. It was part unintentional magical realism, with a splash of paranoia I get, having read Fight Club, that some pieces of the story aren't exactly as reported and that there's actually a hallucination of some sort going on. But, no, Shylock isn't imaginary. He's in Manchester and interacting with the other characters.
While Shylock dominates a play in which he only has five or so scenes, there are a lot of other pieces that Shakespeare seems interested in pursuing that Jacobson (a Shakespearean scholar himself) doesn't. That's fine--honing in on a particular theme, motif, or concept is one of the reasons that we find Shakespeare so endlessly fascinating--but the angle of approach is unfamiliar to me. I'm not well versed in Jewish writing--aside from the Bible, I guess--and though I know a bit about Jewish history, there's enough cultural static between the Jewish lifestyle and my own that I could only empathize with what Strulovich struggled.
There's also a great deal of identity crises throughout the piece, as well as a hefty helping of self-loathing. I should have been able to fully identify with that aspect of the novel, but even for me, a Mormon, I found it a bit much.
In the end, with some beautiful analyses and thoughts added in, I end up feeling a little confused. That's a great way to end any reaction to The Merchant of Venice, because there are things that a modern reader simply can't access in the way it was originally received. Still, it's hard to be enthusiastic about a story that leaves you a little hollow. But, then again, there's a cost to being Jewish in the modern world, and that hollow cost can be simultaneously the way in which you identify yourself and reject any easy identification. The difficulty of being an inheritor of victimization, identified only as victim, and yet also knowing that sympathies run out are strong, underlying threads throughout Jacobson's work. I appreciate that take on a world that I don't know (I'm not rich enough to identify with the hedonists that otherwise populate the pages, nor Jewish in any degree to know what it is to carry a tradition* that stretches back into the dusty beginnings of Western history), but I fear that, in the end, I was left in the cold.
And maybe that was the whole point.
---
* Yes, I'm part of a Mormon tradition, but it is nascent. I don't know if I'm generous enough to even allow that Mormon tradition is genuinely Christian tradition, feeling to me like an amalgamation of Christian pieces taken a la carte rather than through inheritance.
But one thing that is a guaranteed "Shut up and take my money!" proposition is the Hogarth Press Shakespeare imprint and their plan to flood the world with modern novels that retell Shakespearean plays. I've already talked a bit about these books, but I finally finished the first one I've purchased, Shylock Is My Name, and I wanted to sound off on it for a little bit.
First of all, I have to give credit to Howard Jacobson. As I said, I don't read a lot of mainstream fiction, so it's unusual for me to get "writerly" prose out of what I read. With the exception, perhaps, of Patrick Rothfuss, fantasy as a genre isn't as concerned about the words-on-the-page, lyrical quality that writers bring to the craft. This isn't to say they don't write well, they just don't focus on the sentence level beauty as much. Sure, there are exceptions (I already mentioned one), but my experience has been that the language ought to be straightforward and clear--that it ought not to obfuscate the story in any way. There's nothing wrong with that, but since that's my default reading setup, it's a powerful change of pace to read a book by someone who obviously puts a lot of care into his sentences, dialogue, and descriptions. Jacobson writes powerful prose that is equal parts smooth and sharp, like glass. While I don't know that I love this style of writing, it is so different from what I usually take in, I can't help but appreciate it, if only for the variety alone.
Additionally, Jacobson--as all these authors who are participating in this project will have to do--is telling a story that we already know about (in this case, unsurprisingly, The Merchant of Venice) and is updating it. Shylock Is My Name has been moved out of Venice and into contemporary England, which means that it's going into a land that has had a long history of antisemitism but also a country and time set in a post-Holocaust world. These contradictory factors are one of many paradoxes that Jacobson explores--who is, himself, Jewish--and is one of the reasons for my reaction to the book.
So far as the story goes, it's fairly familiar: The stand-in characters all have fairly easy to recognize parallels from the play (Portia is Plurabelle, Antonio is D'Anton, Shylock is Strulovich) and they have motivations that are gleaned from the source material. What's strange, however, is the fact that this is not only a post-Holocaust world: It's also post-Shakespearean. The characters quote from the other plays, they mention the Bard in passing...and Shylock is a character of the book. Not a person named Shylock, but the actual character. Strulovich speaks with Shylock, referring to Shylock's history as understood within the play. Questions about how Shylock loved Leah (mentioned, but never seen, in the source material) and grew to hate Jessica (Shylock's daughter) aren't subtext--they're actual conversation pieces.
This is where I struggled with the book. It was part unintentional magical realism, with a splash of paranoia I get, having read Fight Club, that some pieces of the story aren't exactly as reported and that there's actually a hallucination of some sort going on. But, no, Shylock isn't imaginary. He's in Manchester and interacting with the other characters.
While Shylock dominates a play in which he only has five or so scenes, there are a lot of other pieces that Shakespeare seems interested in pursuing that Jacobson (a Shakespearean scholar himself) doesn't. That's fine--honing in on a particular theme, motif, or concept is one of the reasons that we find Shakespeare so endlessly fascinating--but the angle of approach is unfamiliar to me. I'm not well versed in Jewish writing--aside from the Bible, I guess--and though I know a bit about Jewish history, there's enough cultural static between the Jewish lifestyle and my own that I could only empathize with what Strulovich struggled.
There's also a great deal of identity crises throughout the piece, as well as a hefty helping of self-loathing. I should have been able to fully identify with that aspect of the novel, but even for me, a Mormon, I found it a bit much.
In the end, with some beautiful analyses and thoughts added in, I end up feeling a little confused. That's a great way to end any reaction to The Merchant of Venice, because there are things that a modern reader simply can't access in the way it was originally received. Still, it's hard to be enthusiastic about a story that leaves you a little hollow. But, then again, there's a cost to being Jewish in the modern world, and that hollow cost can be simultaneously the way in which you identify yourself and reject any easy identification. The difficulty of being an inheritor of victimization, identified only as victim, and yet also knowing that sympathies run out are strong, underlying threads throughout Jacobson's work. I appreciate that take on a world that I don't know (I'm not rich enough to identify with the hedonists that otherwise populate the pages, nor Jewish in any degree to know what it is to carry a tradition* that stretches back into the dusty beginnings of Western history), but I fear that, in the end, I was left in the cold.
And maybe that was the whole point.
---
* Yes, I'm part of a Mormon tradition, but it is nascent. I don't know if I'm generous enough to even allow that Mormon tradition is genuinely Christian tradition, feeling to me like an amalgamation of Christian pieces taken a la carte rather than through inheritance.
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