Summary:
Let’s get it out there at the start:
this is one wild and crazy book. It is built on a fictionalized account of a
meeting that actually took place between the literary critic Harold Bloom and
Benzion Netanyahu, the father of the current Prime Minister of Israel. Around
this seemingly nondescript event, Joshua Cohen has created an amalgam of at
least five simultaneous narratives packed into 237 antic pages.
First, there is the story of the
uneasy life of an assimilated Jewish academic, Ruben Blum, the much less illustrious
stand-in for Harold Bloom. He is trying to find domestic tranquility and career
advancement while teaching in the history department at a small liberal arts
school, Corbin College, without completely submerging his Jewish identity.
Then there is the family saga. Ruben’s
wife, Edith, is bored in the boondocks. His daughter Judy, who aspires to get
admitted to a top tier university (anything but Corbin), is totally focused on
getting plastic surgery on her unsatisfactory nose. Blum’s in-laws, who are
affiliated but barely practicing Jews, visit the Blums for Rosh Hashana and
express their disappointment that Ruben is raising his family so far from the New
York City metropolis. Ruben’s parents, who are more observant, visit the Blums
for Thanksgiving. The visit deteriorates into the usual family squabbling and
miscommunication, and ends on a macabre,
comic note. Judy agrees to a day outing with her grandfather but is not ready
at the appointed time. Her grandfather knocks on her bedroom door and Judy yells
that it is stuck; he then rams the door open with his shoulder and the swinging
doorknob smashes right into Judy’s nose, a convenient rhinoplasty (imagine
another author who would have the chutzpah to use a classic anti-Semitic trope
in such a hilarious way).
Now add a tale of academic intrigue
and infighting. Blum’s life becomes complicated when he is asked to chair the search
committee that is charged with the decision whether Corbin College should hire
Benzion Netanyahu, an unknown Jewish scholar.
Blum has to navigate the difficult passage between an objective assessment
and satisfying what he thinks the administration wants him to do. Cohen
captures the power dynamic of faculty meetings and visiting lectures with all
their bombast and jockeying for position.
Next, fold in a robust novel of
ideas. Blum reads lengthy letters of recommendation written by Netanyahu’s peers
in support of or in opposition to his application for a faculty position.
Netanyahu’s lecture outlines his thesis on the origins of antisemitism and the
critical turn towards a racial definition that arose in the wake of the Spanish
Inquisition. Of course, the story of antisemitism cannot be divorced from a
dark reading of Jewish history. This is all based on academic work of the real
Benzion Netanyahu.
Finally, there is the clashing
cultures story as the Netanyahu family deals with the snow and cold winter weather
in upstate New York and living in close quarters with Americans who they barely
understand. The climax of the book involves an overheated adolescent encounter
between Judy and Yonatan Netanyahu, the future Israeli hero who will be killed
in the 1976 raid that rescued the hijacked hostages in Entebbe. Benjamin (Bibi),
the Israeli Prime Minister, also runs across the pages of this fanciful novel
but there is no intimation of what fate has in store for him 60 years in the
future.
The
Netanyahus is
a raucous unpredictable book, one that that
in all likelihood will not be comparable to anything you have read
before."
View full annotation
