The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! đ
agnesg's review against another edition
dark
funny
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Antisemitism
Moderate: Blood and Injury/Injury detail
criticalgayze's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
I feel like I should start this review of this, until recently, relatively obscure title that goes on to win major literary awards with something ironic like, Did you know that the Pulitzer Prize picks good books? Or with something self-castigating like, Why am I wasting my time writing a review of this book that, if you hear about it, it's because you follow the Pulitzer and probably read everything they award anyway?
If you need a review, let me say that this book is good. It's a real window into the "how we got here" of American-Israeli relations and Zionist v. anti-Zionist sentiment that bridges us from the post-WWII formation of the Jewish state to America's relationship with Bibi Netanyahu today. In that way, like (almost) all Pulitzer-winners, it is a historical chronicle of America told from a singular perspective, and I appreciate the Pulitzer's recent expansion of who those singular voices get to be. Because it is more of a conversational piece, it does not score high on my points system, but there are so many historical aficionados that this will work really well for.
To get into what did work for me and what I wanted more of, I picked up a novel titled The Netanyahus hoping to get a window into what dynamics would produce an incredibly beloved yet polarizing figure like Bibi Netanyahu. By the subtitle, I even was eager for something more satirical or lampooning of that kind of global rightwing politicking. And when those titular "Netanyahus" show up, I found the novel at its most engaging. Until that point, our narrator is having largely internal debates, and the arrival of Ben-Zion Netanyahu (Bibi's father) gives him an external sparring partner for those conversations that creates the kind of dramatic tension I look for and prefer in a story. But this book is about "the Netanyahus" in much the way Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is about Ma Rainey, and Ben-Zion and his family do not show up for nearly half of the book's length, which means the reader spends (in my preference) far too long in an internal dialogue that holds no real ramifications.
To give a caveat to the author's credit, the novel that we get is aligned with the stated intent of the post-text Author Notes. Cohen is really writing this sort of love letter to his literary icon and semi-mentor Harold Bloom, the famed critic and professor, and a singular period in Bloom's life that really highlights what seems to my Gentile understanding a number of tensions within the diasporic Jewish community. If I had started with that letter of authorial intent, I would have no person to blame but myself for where I ended up, and Cohen therefore receives my props for his achievement.
Not the book that is necessarily for me, but a stunning achievement and an interesting historical footnote nonetheless.
Quotes:
all the way back to the Rosetta Stone and even the Bible, both of whichâ most people forgetâ are substantially just tax- documents (3)
Incidentally, you could always tell a Ms. Gringling productionâ one of the missives she typed from his dictation and signed with Dr. Morseâs nameâ because of the neatness and propriety of her Mâs. Georgeâs own M was a capacious manse that roofed the o and r and often the s and e as well. It was a signature that communicated, in effect, âyouâre mine, you dwell at my pleasure, I contain you,â while Ms. Gringlingâs forgeries tended to have more respect for boundaries. (10)
The past was merely the process by which the present was attained, and the present merely the most current stage of the American superlative, to be overtaken by tomorrowâs liberation and capitalâs spread, until the ultimate transfiguration of world history into world democracy. (31)
Simultaneously, a kindred mass- process was occurring here in America, where Jews were busy being deinvented, or uninvented, or assimilated, by democracy and market- forces, intermarriage and miscegenation. (51)
âIâm sure the apples theyâre picking are apples. Itâs not symbol season." (65)
Was not the best course of action to give them some darkened niche and parchment to contemplate, not out of charity, but as a preemptive defense? Because we all know what happens to educated men when they are neglected: they become inflamed by neglect. And we all know what reactions can fester: heresy, apostasy, false messianism. (79)
Universal truth, if it could exist, could only be found in the Bible, whose claim to divine provenance and authority demanded its accurate preservation. (169)
The history of every people is also a history of its craziness, and the more science becomes a religion, the more religion must pretend to be a science, desperate for all logical explanations. (180)
e leveled at any attempt to change the history that Lenin or, later, Stalin wanted. Today, in America, I suspect that revisionism means much the same, only within the context of another power structure: the insistence on writing history in such a way that unsettles whatâs called a ruling-class and interferes with the functioning of government and business. (182)
If you need a review, let me say that this book is good. It's a real window into the "how we got here" of American-Israeli relations and Zionist v. anti-Zionist sentiment that bridges us from the post-WWII formation of the Jewish state to America's relationship with Bibi Netanyahu today. In that way, like (almost) all Pulitzer-winners, it is a historical chronicle of America told from a singular perspective, and I appreciate the Pulitzer's recent expansion of who those singular voices get to be. Because it is more of a conversational piece, it does not score high on my points system, but there are so many historical aficionados that this will work really well for.
To get into what did work for me and what I wanted more of, I picked up a novel titled The Netanyahus hoping to get a window into what dynamics would produce an incredibly beloved yet polarizing figure like Bibi Netanyahu. By the subtitle, I even was eager for something more satirical or lampooning of that kind of global rightwing politicking. And when those titular "Netanyahus" show up, I found the novel at its most engaging. Until that point, our narrator is having largely internal debates, and the arrival of Ben-Zion Netanyahu (Bibi's father) gives him an external sparring partner for those conversations that creates the kind of dramatic tension I look for and prefer in a story. But this book is about "the Netanyahus" in much the way Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is about Ma Rainey, and Ben-Zion and his family do not show up for nearly half of the book's length, which means the reader spends (in my preference) far too long in an internal dialogue that holds no real ramifications.
To give a caveat to the author's credit, the novel that we get is aligned with the stated intent of the post-text Author Notes. Cohen is really writing this sort of love letter to his literary icon and semi-mentor Harold Bloom, the famed critic and professor, and a singular period in Bloom's life that really highlights what seems to my Gentile understanding a number of tensions within the diasporic Jewish community. If I had started with that letter of authorial intent, I would have no person to blame but myself for where I ended up, and Cohen therefore receives my props for his achievement.
Not the book that is necessarily for me, but a stunning achievement and an interesting historical footnote nonetheless.
Quotes:
all the way back to the Rosetta Stone and even the Bible, both of whichâ most people forgetâ are substantially just tax- documents (3)
Incidentally, you could always tell a Ms. Gringling productionâ one of the missives she typed from his dictation and signed with Dr. Morseâs nameâ because of the neatness and propriety of her Mâs. Georgeâs own M was a capacious manse that roofed the o and r and often the s and e as well. It was a signature that communicated, in effect, âyouâre mine, you dwell at my pleasure, I contain you,â while Ms. Gringlingâs forgeries tended to have more respect for boundaries. (10)
The past was merely the process by which the present was attained, and the present merely the most current stage of the American superlative, to be overtaken by tomorrowâs liberation and capitalâs spread, until the ultimate transfiguration of world history into world democracy. (31)
Simultaneously, a kindred mass- process was occurring here in America, where Jews were busy being deinvented, or uninvented, or assimilated, by democracy and market- forces, intermarriage and miscegenation. (51)
âIâm sure the apples theyâre picking are apples. Itâs not symbol season." (65)
Was not the best course of action to give them some darkened niche and parchment to contemplate, not out of charity, but as a preemptive defense? Because we all know what happens to educated men when they are neglected: they become inflamed by neglect. And we all know what reactions can fester: heresy, apostasy, false messianism. (79)
Universal truth, if it could exist, could only be found in the Bible, whose claim to divine provenance and authority demanded its accurate preservation. (169)
The history of every people is also a history of its craziness, and the more science becomes a religion, the more religion must pretend to be a science, desperate for all logical explanations. (180)
e leveled at any attempt to change the history that Lenin or, later, Stalin wanted. Today, in America, I suspect that revisionism means much the same, only within the context of another power structure: the insistence on writing history in such a way that unsettles whatâs called a ruling-class and interferes with the functioning of government and business. (182)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical trauma
Moderate: Antisemitism
dwager's review against another edition
challenging
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
2.0
This book has two main focuses. One is done well but the other is very problematic.
One focus is the antisemitic environment of academia in 1960. This theme is interesting, and by turns funny, poignant, and traumatic. If this had been the whole book I would have rated it higher.
But the other focus is the Netanyahu family, with Benjamin (Israeli prime minister) as a 10-year-old child. In these sections the author seems mostly interested in showing them as uncultured outsiders (the narrator calls them 'the Yahus' in case you miss it) with no concept of social or academic norms. There are chapters giving the history and politics of Zionism (disguised as a letter of recommendation) and chapters eviscerating Ben-Zion's (Benjamin's father's) actual, real-world scholarship. And chapters showing the bad parenting Benjamin and his brothers got.
It felt really mean-spirited and is based on a story Harold Bloom told the author near the end of his life. Even if it's true, I'm not sure what purpose it serves. Pulitzer or not, this is a book to think twice before reading.
One focus is the antisemitic environment of academia in 1960. This theme is interesting, and by turns funny, poignant, and traumatic. If this had been the whole book I would have rated it higher.
But the other focus is the Netanyahu family, with Benjamin (Israeli prime minister) as a 10-year-old child. In these sections the author seems mostly interested in showing them as uncultured outsiders (the narrator calls them 'the Yahus' in case you miss it) with no concept of social or academic norms. There are chapters giving the history and politics of Zionism (disguised as a letter of recommendation) and chapters eviscerating Ben-Zion's (Benjamin's father's) actual, real-world scholarship. And chapters showing the bad parenting Benjamin and his brothers got.
It felt really mean-spirited and is based on a story Harold Bloom told the author near the end of his life. Even if it's true, I'm not sure what purpose it serves. Pulitzer or not, this is a book to think twice before reading.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Antisemitism
Minor: Car accident and Sexual content
More...