Howard Jacobson by Howard Jacobson (review)

Howard Jacobson has been repeatedly called the “English Philip Roth,” a comparison that has at times irked and irritated the British-Jewish writer. The comparison is not without merit, however, as Jacobson’s oeuvre oozes with the same (icky) corporeal masculinist gumption that emanates from Roth’s prose. David Brauner’s Howard Jacobson (2020) is the first monograph devoted to Jacobson and sets out to illuminate the “rich complexity and nuance of [Jacobson’s] work, rather than to pin its author down” (2). Brauner triumphantly brings into focus the importance, relevance, and aesthetic complexities of Jacobson’s writings. Ironically, Brauner’s criticism shines most brightly when he elucidates the Rothian intertextualisms dotted throughout Jacobson’s work.

The book is structured thematically and is split into three chapters: “Being Funny” (Chapter 1), “Being Men” (Chapter 2), and “Being Jewish” (Chapter 3). Brauner’s task is tricky in that Jacobson has written extensively, having chalked up sixteen novels and five nonfiction texts. To compound matters, Jacobson’s literary outputs have been rather uneven in terms of quality, meaning Brauner has the unenviable task of analyzing (though not necessarily defending) some of Jacobson’s lesser fictions. To his credit, Brauner generously connects these works by stressing how Jacobson’s ideas develop from his weaker fictions and emerge more strongly in his better (and more successful) novels. Helpfully, for those unfamiliar with Jacobson, Brauner in his Afterword identifies five of Jacobson’s most “exceptional” (203) novels: The Very Model of a Man (1992), The Mighty Walzer (1999), Kalooki Nights (2006), J (2014), and Live a Little (2019) (he also gives an honorary mention to Peeping Tom [1984], Who’s Sorry Now? [2002], The Act of Love [2008], and The Finkler Question [2010]). The fact that this monograph only has three sections to discuss Jacobson’s long list of literary outputs means each of Brauner’s chapters is quite lengthy. Thankfully, however, Brauner’s writing, especially in Chapter 3, is engaging, nuanced, and insightful, even when the source material itself is laborious and plodding.

Jacobson, as Brauner discusses in his Introduction, is a divisive writer with divisive opinions. His (formerly held) views on student-lecturer relationships are dubious and he, like Roth, has been accused of misogyny. His books, like Roth’s, are (for the most part) heavily focused on Jewish masculinity, and his representation of women is problematic (to put it mildly). Brauner provides us with a detailed overview of Jacobson’s public persona(s) and reviews his contentious personal politics but thankfully resists in the book’s main body any impulse to locate the author within his characters. Instead, Brauner offers a robust and critically considerate overview of Jacobson’s literature.

In Chapter 1, Brauner examines Jacobson’s deployment of the comedic, ranging from “light-hearted sexual farce to acerbic political satire” to an “anti-pastoral sensibility and a preoccupation with literary politics” (42). Brauner deftly outlines the anti-pastoralism of Jacobson’s two novels Coming from Behind (1983) and Peeping Tom but seems to shift away from this topic in his discussion of Redback (1986), an academic satire set in Australia. Nevertheless, Brauner is adroit in ensuring his book creates links between each of the texts he discusses.

Chapter 2, “Being Men: Masculinity, Mortality and Sexual Politics,” provides a detailed and lengthy analysis of masculinism in Jacobson’s fiction. Brauner refutes any suggestion that Jacobson’s novels conform to ideals of heteronormative masculinity, instead arguing Jacobson’s fiction perennially reconstructs ideas of what it means to be a man. The chapter’s analysis of Live a Little stands out, as does its discussion of The Very Model of a Man. Both sections elucidate the vivacity and complexity of Jacobson’s writings and his nuanced depiction of masculinity.

The third chapter, “Being Jewish: Philip Roth, Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” is the strongest of the three, and for readers of Philip Roth Studies, I suspect the most eye-catching. The chapter’s strength stems from Brauner’s theoretical approach and the texts he examines. He...