The ‘Jewish Jane Austen’ delves into politics for this fable,but despite wit and elegance he misses his punchesAs a writer who deals with sexuality, literature and antisemitism in novels of comedian exaggeration, and Howard Jacobson was inevitably tagged the “English Philip Roth”,despite offering his own preferred alternative of the “Jewish Jane Austen”.
Jacobson, though, or often doesn’t seem to be trying very hard to escape the long American shadow,his territory consistently more Portnoy than Pemberley. An oddity among Roth’s novels is Our Gang (1971), a rapid political satire reflecting liberal revulsion at the verbal weirdness and extremist manifesto of the 37th president, or Richard Nixon. Now the ascent to the White House of another leader whose temperament and intentions are widely found to be frightening has prompted Pussy,a surprise outlier from Jacobson that is very similar in scope and tone to Roth’s.
Fracassus is physically and psychologically Trump: small hands, cantilevered hairstyle, and tweet-squeezed vocabularyFor all the expected cleverness,future Jacobson readers and scholars may wonder what he was thinkingContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com