Laughed out loud in the first few pages of Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander.
From Publishers Weekly
"Auslander, a magazine writer, describes his Orthodox Jewish upbringing as theological abuse in this sardonic, twitchy memoir that waits for the other shoe to drop from on high. The title refers to his agitation over whether to circumcise his soon to be born son, yet another Jewish ritual stirring confusion and fear in his soul. Flitting haphazardly between expectant-father neuroses in Woodstock, N.Y., and childhood neuroses in Monsey, N.Y., Auslander labors mightily to channel Philip Roth with cutting, comically anxious spiels lamenting his claustrophobic house, off-kilter family and the temptations of all things nonkosher, from shiksas to Slim Jims. The irony of his name, Shalom (Hebrew for peace), isn't lost on him, a tormented soul gripped with dread, fending off an alcoholic, abusive father while imagining his heavenly one as a menacing, mocking, inescapable presence. Fond of tormenting himself with worst-case scenarios, he concludes, That would be so God. Like Roth's Portnoy, he commits minor acts of rebellion and awaits his punishment with youthful literal-mindedness. But this memoir is too wonky to engage the reader's sympathy or cut free Auslander's persona from the swath of stereotype—and he can't sublimate his rage into the cultural mischief that brightens Roth's oeuvre. That said, a surprisingly poignant ending awaits readers."
But hearing about his angry episodes with porn, pot, and theft as a teen have left me less amused. Let's seee how it wraps up.
I finally started Fahrenheit 451, am just a few pages in, and am pleasantly surprised. Sci-fi can be beautiful. Of course! Why is this such a revelation to me? I must have been expecting it to be tech-y. Like the operating manual for a vacuum cleaner, but look:
"She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun."
And I escape into the good life of a California coastal town as I'm reading The Jewel Box, a self-published mystery written by Sophia's mom and fellow writers. I'm not used to mysteries. My mind is like a spider on the page, "Did he do it?" "Is this guy a fake?" "What's her deal?" "Don't trust anyone."
Three very different books.
One reader's thoughts as she steps from book to book.
Books I've Finished
- "A Christmas Memory"
- by Truman Capote 12/8/12
- "Child's Christmas in Wales"
- by Dylan Thomas 12/7/12
- "One Christmas"
- by Truman Capote 11/29/12
- "The Thanksgiving Visitor"
- by Truman Capote 11/29/12
- Inside Mrs. B's Classroom
- by Leslie Baldacci 11/28/12
- The Bee Eater
- by Richard Whitmire 11/15/12
- There Are No Shortcuts
- by Rafe Esquith 10/28/12
- I'd Like to Apologize to
- Every Teacher I Ever Had
- by Tony Danza 10/21/12
- Corked
- by Kathryn Borel 10/15/12
- Year of Learning Dangerously
- by Quinn Cummings 9/30/12
- A Hologram for the King
- by Dave Eggers 8/23/12
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- by Harper Lee 7/18/12
About Me
- Christine
- I often have a few books with bookmarks in them at once. I enjoy classics more than contemporary works of fiction, often read historical fiction, and love to get glimpses into other people's lives by reading memoirs and biographies.
2 comments:
The first and last sound very interesting; I know the middle one is interesting. I've read Fahrenheit 451 about 3 times (once in the past week), and whenever I'm not reading it, I forget how powerful it is. I retain the basic message, the terrifying idea of a world where people refuse to read books and burn the ones that are left and all the consequences, and I remember the story, but only as I'm reading the actual text can I feel the power of the language Bradbury uses. Events in the story are often almost surreal, but when I put the book down, they lose that quality. This is a book that needs to be re-read, again and again, because only by reading it can everything in it be properly experienced--memories are not good enough with this book. DRD
Yea, Farenheit 451 has left me full of it's writing style. Much of the dialogue is retained in the movie, which we saw at the Egyptian (for free!) on Friday night, and the movie tells the story in it's own way. The moment with Montag and the three women in his parlour was memorable in both mediums.
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