The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It’s difficult to pass judgment on a book (for what else is a review) without coming across as biased, or prejudiced, or when the book is about race, racist. In fact, maybe it’s impossible. And nothing’s worse for a middle-class white man than to be judged “racist.” A man who is racist has no authority on any subject, even if race isn’t a factor. (He’s a brilliant mathematician you say? But he’s a bigot, so who’s to say his maths are even that good?)
So it’ll be hard to say anything about The Finkler Question without sounding like an anti-Semite. Still, I refuse to say “oh well” (that’s the middle-class mantra) and just say what I got to say, and judgments be damned. I want to walk the fine line, if I can.
Overall, I liked the book. The ending was damned depressing, and although there were a few chuckles, I could only survive the read by holding its characters at arms’ length. But Jacobson’s writing style is engaging, provocative in the right places without being showy, expository in that way that makes telling, not showing, a pleasure to read.
But this idea that “everyone hates Jews, and no one hates them more than Jews themselves” I just couldn’t accept. As a concept (and here’s me being racist, sorry) it was just too stereotypically Jewish. Personally, I don’t hate Jews. I don’t even know that many. The few I know, I like, but not because or despite their Jewishness.
So what I did was, I took the message as a trope, not a truth, and applied it to one of the main characters. Everyone hates Treslove, and no one hates him more than himself. That made the whole novel work for me.