Review on "The Finkler Question" by Howard Jacobson (Part I)
It has been a joyful read just that I am not sure that I have got a hundred percent out of what the author wants to convey. Judaism and Anti-semitism is beyond my knowledge scope and my daily concern. But even with limit knowledge on the central issue of this book, I can still relate to parts that unearth the hidden feeling of human hearts, especially those which are depicted with not less sarcastic touches.
Treslove, Finkler and Libor, a combination of two widower with one who never experienced a successful relationship which can survive into marriage, or two Jews who distance with their own Jewishness and one non-Jew yet craving somehow to become one, make up the central characters of this great work. Jewishness is something that overshadows or rather, haunts them all through their life, yet in sharply different ways. Libor, though never clearly states it, seems rather comfortable with his being Jewish because it helped a great deal in winning him his wife in whom he loves truly and dearly a life time. It was only after her death that the very Jewishness becomes self-conciously and thus crudely clear, especially in his relentless mourning. At first he cling unto it as he clings unto the love towards his wife, yet later, as its bitter-sweet coating starts to fade with time passing by, he comes to the fact that just as the memories about his late beloved wife can only make him through the nights, he can not make through another day when the dawn breaks through, because then he is forced to realize about the reality without her. Jewishness is to him the same in the sense that it becomes an alienated reality to him yet at the same time it is intrinsic to his very being. When love is gone, when dream is ended, he for who he is is left on this land, alone, under the scorching sun.
(to be continued)
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