January 22, 2008
Turning the tables on Joshua Cohen
What happens when a literary critic writes a novel? How does he react to a bad review?
Hopefully, Joshua Cohen won’t find out. The literary critic for the Forward has a new novel out (his fourth work of fiction) and he’s off on a book tour.
In “A Heaven of Others,” Cohen imagines a 10-year-old Israeli suicide bombing victim mistakenly ending up in the Muslim afterlife of the Palestinian suicide bomber who killed him. Young Jonathan Schwarzstein tries to find his way through the virgins, the oases and other trappings of an Islamic Paradise to get to the heaven of his own people.
In last week’s Forward, Cohen sat down for an interview with a friend, writer Daniel Elkind. Here’s an excerpt from the piece:
Elkind.: You’ve been at work on a novel about the last Jew on earth. How do you view Jews, especially American Jews, in the world today, and the state of American-Jewish literature?
Cohen.: “Graven Imaginings” is a novel about the last Jew on earth. The last Jew in the universe. From New Jersey, America…“Joysey.” Call him Benjamin Israelien. The last Jew on earth will have a portentous name; he is overweight, and was born with a beard and wearing glasses. What else is there to say? Israel is the moon to me, and Europe a cemetery more impressive than even the fair, and fairwaylike, wilds of Union County, off the Garden State Parkway.
That the ideal of an autonomous Jewish literature in America is itself kitsch doesn’t mean its perceived paragons — its individual novels, and stories — have to be, too. It’s not that all of the chances have already been taken, it’s that all the safely remunerative chances have; and the rest, far from being commentary, might be more dangerous and destructive than our writers can or would want to attempt.
Earlier in the interview, there was an answer Cohen gave that struck me as not being very thoughtful. And that’s surprising because I know Cohen is, if nothing else, a thoughtful writer.
When Elkind asked him about how it must have taken some time to convince himself that he’s qualified to write about Israeli culture in an era of terrorism, Cohen said it took “no time.”
Here’s the full exchange:
Elkind: As an American Jew, it must have taken some time to convince yourself that you’re qualified to write about Israeli culture in the era of terrorism, that you can follow an Israeli boy to the Muslim heaven and beyond. Given the irreverence of your literary imagination, how do you think Israelis will receive this book? What does your American perspective consist of?
Cohen: What qualified me to write about Israel was that I wanted to; it took no time to convince myself. The only reservation I had was about heaven: I wanted to write about the Jewish heaven, but did not feel qualified because I did not and do not believe in “it,” though I should. Swedenborg mapped the Christian heaven. The Muslim heaven features prominently in the Quran, Arabic poetries and Hadith. The Jewish heaven, though, is still a mystery; it’s mystic. Jews believe in olam haba — literally, “the world to come,” which is, accurately, this world if and when messianically perfected, and not “the next world,” or any other world, for that matter, past or future.
How did I reconcile myself? I found, strangely, I had no reservations writing about the Jewish heaven under the guise of a Muslim heaven — in the mirror of “A Heaven of Others.” As for how Israelis will receive this book, I don’t know, as there hasn’t yet been a translation. My American perspective, as you put it, consists of being indulged in my irreverence, only and entirely.
What struck me as odd is the way he swept aside the notion of needing to be qualified to write about Israeli culture. The desire to write about something is not a qualification. It’s certainly not a substitute for researching a subject so that you can speak with some authority when you talk about it in a book. I’m not saying you need to be an expert but you don’t want to look foolish either. Something like that could easily distract from the larger picture a novelist hopes to invoke with their tale.
Guess we’ll just have to wait and read the book to find out if Cohen succeeded on that point.