Beowulf: The Prequel

Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander

I have this rule that I only want to write about things I loved, so I have to write this in the dark in order to get away with it. I did not love Foreskin's Lament.

On the other hand, this: "Hello, McFly! You realize that your blog is just a way to hear yourself talk, right?" So much for rules I made up.

I listened to this book, actually, as narrated by the author in a mostly flat, deadpan-to-the-point-of-maybe-actually-dead drone. It took me what felt like a long time to get through all 63 tracks; walking around the neighborhood, ironing, vacuuming. You name a domestic chore and Mr. Auslander and I have done it together.

I wanted to love this book, and I'm frustrated because I think I could have. It's essentially about Mr. A's Orthodox Jewish upbringing and how its strict rules and mercilessly punitive conception of God screwed him up. In his confusion and anger, he fought back with pornography and hotdogs and finally broke with his family after the birth of his son.

This is a story built on a lot of pain and emotion, and the unfortunate thing for me as a reader is that Auslander chose to bury the pain and emotion under Catskills-level jokes and a sneering disregard for everyone else (except his wife, whom he describes as being very cool and witty, and his baby, who I mean seriously, like he's going to be shitty about his newborn).

His main joke to hide behind is that he gives God the finger, quite literally, whenever he breaks one of the many laws of his religion. The extension of the joke is that God is out to get people, but particularly Mr. Auslander. There is a long section near the end of the book about the convoluted attempts of Mr. A and his wife to both honor the Sabbath and watch the Rangers vie for the Stanley Cup. The lengths that they go to are quite funny, an actual caper, even, but make no sense in the midst of Mr. A's insistence that he doesn't honor the Sabbath (so his mother is hurtful to him for reminding him of it) and that God will punish him personally by making the Rangers lose. When the Rangers win, it is still God punishing him. The tortured logic Mr. A employs to make himself God's victim regardless could've been amusing if done self-deprecatingly or with some kind of self-awareness (after all, Richard Lewis has made a career off of this idea), but it isn't, so it isn't.

God never does get the credit for the good things that happen to Mr. A -- his lovely wife, his son, his friends, who are mentioned in a tantalizing but brief bit at the very end of the book as being "foreskins" like himself. The people he admires and loves do merit mention, I suppose due to Mr. A's thesis that God will punish him and take away the things he loves.

This then is a failure on his part and a mark of the fact that he wasn't ready to tell his story. No amount of bitter attacks on his family or on practitioners of his (former?) religion will signal that he is fighting back against the damage instilled by his upbringing. It simply indicates that he's still fearful and still running away.

I think his editors did Auslander a disservice by not pushing him to tell the more meaningful story. It's as if they settled for the cheap jokes, betting that people wanted to hear a guy ridicule convoluted Orthodox Jewish traditions (though why this means he also has to ridicule and stereotype the inhabitants of his chosen home in Woodstock and the other places he's lived in Israel and New York is beyond me).

I think Mr. Auslander and his editors fell into the David Sedaris trap, whereby they think that it's easy to be as funny as Sedaris -- all you have to do is write about your crazy family. Give it the detachment of Running With Scissors, and you've got a winner on the bookshelves.

But note that Running With Scissors was followed by Dry -- there was a price to pay for that first book's insistence that you can triumph over a bizarre and neglectful upbringing without a scratch. And note that Sedaris is a write of extraordinary gifts and care for the people he writes about. He doesn't ridicule, though he does tease. He doesn't hide from pain; he puts it in context.

And context is lacking from Foreskin's Lament -- Auslander rattles off the prayers required over various types of food and the many and layered activities that are forbidden on the Sabbath, but he doesn't bother to wonder or explain why they exist and why some people are okay with them and why he's not. He's content to nudge us and say, "Isn't that ridiculous? Isn't it stupid?", so we'll say, "Yeah, it is stupid. High five!" That's fine talk for a barbecue, but you need to expose yourself more in your writing. You need to allow yourself to be vulnerable.

I'm guessing that Mr. Auslander felt all too vulnerable in going as far as he did here: in talking about his drug use and trafe indulgences and his encounters with porn and with a prostitute. And especially about his family, and about how his father used to beat his brother with his mother's passive consent.

But he stops just when the writing would've become meaningful. He resorts to arguments with his personal guardian God and the resultant tired anti-Auslander's-God jokes rather than putting his feelings and his anger and sorrow into context. He never wonders how others view God, how others deal with the same thing he's going through, how his mother and father may have seen things. He's so tied up in his own head that he can't see anything else, which ultimately makes his writing tiresome and thin.

I wish he had been pushed to tell the whole story. I wish he'd written openly about his anger and his fear instead of wrapping them up in deflective humor. He didn't admit that he's still struggling with terrible fears, all the more terrible because he knows they aren't logical. He didn't admit that he lost something by breaking with his parents, and that they must've lost something, too. He didn't talk about how therapy helped (or hurt) him; he falls back on (of course) a repated deadpan joke about how much the therapy cost.

He didn't go on a quest to address his problem, he just folded up more into himself. And that's a shame not only for him, but for his readers.

My Loves (of the big and small screens)

I can't explain it. These people show up in a guest spot or a movie trailer and I sit up and go "Hey! I've got to see that! I love you, Ian McShane!"

1. SuperDave Osborne, aka Bob Einstein.
Ok, his real name is Bob Einstein, so that's cause for love right there. He played Officer Judy on the Smothers Brothers show, and though that was before my time and I've only seen clips, the very name Officer Judy makes me laugh every time. I mostly know him as SuperDave, the parody of the Evel Knievel-style stunt performer, and I've mostly only seen SuperDave on Letterman's show. So when I think about it, I've barely ever seen this guy, yet every time is a treat. Thanks to Curb Your Enthusiasm (and a few Arrested Developments), he's around more than ever before. His starkly deadpan delivery and distinctive husky voice make him instantly recognizable. His no-bullshit demeanor in the midst of playing the most bullshitting of characters is utterly delightful. He doesn't beg you to laugh because he knows you will. Love!

2. William Daniels
That's Dr. Craig to me, of my beloved St. Elsewhere. Another one with a highly distinctive voice (maybe that's the secret to my heart) -- a short guy with a powerful presence, perfectly cast as John Adams in the movie musical 1776 (he sings, too!). He's a perfectionist and an autocrat doomed by his own pride (just like me!). In real life, he's been married to his actress wife Bonnie Bartlett (Mrs. Craig, natch) for one million years. He was the voice of KITT the car. When he took the part of Mr. Feeny in Boy Meets World, I despaired that he was sinking into the sitcom mire, but he's smarter than I am and picked a good show. He's 80 now, so my longtime dream of acting with him is increasingly imperiled, but I'll always have him yelling at Erlich. Get younger, Mr. Daniels!

3. Gary Cole
You find me another guy who can perfectly embody murderer Jeffrey MacDonald, superfather Mr. Brady-via-Robert-Reed, and the boss man in Office Space. Oh, you can't? Of course not -- no one else is as perfect as Cole. He brings class and gravity to everything he does, while being one of the funniest guys around. Try that for your next party trick. Hint: you can't do it!

4. Robin Weigert
If I get started on the Deadwood cast, I'll never stop, so let's just mention the amazing Jane Canary. I've only ever seen her in one other thing, a bizarre bit in Angels in America where she plays a Mormon diorama thing come to life. She just has one of those faces -- kind and compelling, a face that really seems to see the people she's looking at, which brings every scene she plays to crackling life. Hey -- IMDB just told me she's on the new show Life! Now I have to watch that.