Sunday, January 2, 2011
Y'know...I'm beginning to notice a trend...
people hated 2010 (h/t La Crom)
...for what it's worth, I didn't much care for 2010. But I have to say, I at least preferred 2010 to 2007, 1998, 1996, and 1990. It was a banally bad year with some good parts intermingling with the excruciating periods, much akin to 2001, 2000, 1999, 1994 and 1991.
In my opinion, the annus horribilis was 1990. I'm relieved its now more than twenty years in the past. Just sayin'.
people hated 2010 (h/t La Crom)
...for what it's worth, I didn't much care for 2010. But I have to say, I at least preferred 2010 to 2007, 1998, 1996, and 1990. It was a banally bad year with some good parts intermingling with the excruciating periods, much akin to 2001, 2000, 1999, 1994 and 1991.
In my opinion, the annus horribilis was 1990. I'm relieved its now more than twenty years in the past. Just sayin'.
Happy Viennese New Year from Shanghai
In Vienna....
...........................In Shanghai
h/t La Ozorio
...........................In Shanghai
h/t La Ozorio
Happy 2011's in Wein
Things are looking up in Vienna right now. Franz Welser-Most still gets an unjust bum rap (Frankly Worse-than-Most) for being given the London Philharmonic in his late 20's when he wasn't ready. But he's now 50, and there isn't a living conductor more idiomatic in the Austrians (Mozart, Schubert, Bruckner, Second Viennese School, and perhaps Johann Strauss too by the looks of this concert), few more competent hands in the opera pit (the Zurich Opera has had a mini-golden age), or a less dogmatic champion of new music. We may be due to see the Vienna State Opera's greatest era
since its director was a nice Jewish boy by the name of Gustav Mahler. With all the chaos that seems imminent at all the other world-beating opera houses (La Scala in Milan, Royal Opera in London, the MET in NYC), it may not be long before FWM and the Vienna State Opera set the standard for the world.
Quote of the Day
Der Fersko (while talking about Law and Order): Fred Thompson! Which part of New York are you from? Memphis?
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Happy 2011
I thought I'd bring it in with the Strauss New Year's Concert, instead, bringing it in with Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Goodbye 2010
Not sure how much I believe this sentiment. But I certainly tried this year.
Happy 2011 everyone.
....cuz even if the Vienna New Year's concert's usually boring, listening to the once-a-year breaking out of Johann Strauss is usually the highlight of every New Year. You can't possibly be in a bad mood with this music. Once after watching an episode of Law and Order I tried to imagine that somebody could do a Steampunk version of the Vienna New Year's Concert so that I wouldn't be the only American under 80 watching this thing.........is that suggestion as odd as it feels?
Looks like I'm celebrating my New Year's Eve by going down to DC for the very first time since VoW's dissolution (a Steve Reich concert at Strathmore doesn't count) and going to the new Brickskellar which is directly across from Church of the Pilgrims. Nothing about this feels like a bad idea, nothing at all...
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Quote of the Day
Der Fersko (about A Serious Man): Also did you laugh when the wife thought Fyvush Finkel
was dead
That might have broken the 4th wall
was dead
That might have broken the 4th wall
2010 Darwin Awards
The one thing I look forward to every December more than the Bad Sex Awards. (h/t Dad)
8th Place
In Detroit , a 41-year-old man got stuck
and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an
18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.
7th Place
A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker,
who "totally zoned when he ran", accidentally, jogged off a 100-foot high cliff
on his daily run.
6th Place
While at the beach, Daniel Jones, 21, dug
an 8 foot hole for protection from the wind and had been sitting in a beach
chair at the bottom, when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of
sand. People on the beach used their hands and shovels trying to get him
out but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment
almost an hour to free him. Jones was pronounced dead at a
hospital.
5th Place
Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed as he
fell through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was robbing. Death was
caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth to keep his hands
free, rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.
4th Place
Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed
as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with
four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.
3rd Place
After walking around a marked police
patrol car parked at the front door, a man walked into H&J Leather &
Firearms intent on robbing the store. The shop was full of customers and a
uniformed officer was
standing at the counter. Upon seeing the officer,
the would-be robber announced a hold-up and fired a few wild shots from a target
pistol. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire and several
customers also drew their guns and fired. The robber was pronounced dead
at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended
cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot
wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No
one else was hurt.
HONOURABLE MENTION
Paul Stiller, 47, and his wife Bonnie
were bored just driving around at 2 a.m. So they lit a stick of dynamite
to toss out the window to see what would happen. Apparently they failed to
notice the window was closed
RUNNER UP
Kerry Bingham had been drinking with
several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped
from a local bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more
heated and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30
a.m. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no
one had brought a bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking,
volunteered and pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable lay nearby.
They secured one end around Bingham's leg and then tied the other (!) to the
bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his
foot off at the ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the icy
water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. Bingham's foot was never
located.
AND THE WINNER IS...
Zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt ( Paderborn
, Germany ) fed his constipated elephant 22 doses of animal laxative and more
than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm
finally got relief. Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was
attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved
beast unloaded. The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation
knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock as the
elephant continued to evacuate 200 pounds of dung on top of him. It seems
to be just one of those freak accidents that proves.... 'shit
happens'.
8th Place
In Detroit , a 41-year-old man got stuck
and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an
18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys.
7th Place
A 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker,
who "totally zoned when he ran", accidentally, jogged off a 100-foot high cliff
on his daily run.
6th Place
While at the beach, Daniel Jones, 21, dug
an 8 foot hole for protection from the wind and had been sitting in a beach
chair at the bottom, when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of
sand. People on the beach used their hands and shovels trying to get him
out but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment
almost an hour to free him. Jones was pronounced dead at a
hospital.
5th Place
Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed as he
fell through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was robbing. Death was
caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth to keep his hands
free, rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor.
4th Place
Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed
as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with
four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger.
3rd Place
After walking around a marked police
patrol car parked at the front door, a man walked into H&J Leather &
Firearms intent on robbing the store. The shop was full of customers and a
uniformed officer was
standing at the counter. Upon seeing the officer,
the would-be robber announced a hold-up and fired a few wild shots from a target
pistol. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire and several
customers also drew their guns and fired. The robber was pronounced dead
at the scene by Paramedics. Crime scene investigators located 47 expended
cartridge cases in the shop. The subsequent autopsy revealed 23 gunshot
wounds. Ballistics identified rounds from 7 different weapons. No
one else was hurt.
HONOURABLE MENTION
Paul Stiller, 47, and his wife Bonnie
were bored just driving around at 2 a.m. So they lit a stick of dynamite
to toss out the window to see what would happen. Apparently they failed to
notice the window was closed
RUNNER UP
Kerry Bingham had been drinking with
several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped
from a local bridge in the middle of traffic. The conversation grew more
heated and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30
a.m. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no
one had brought a bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking,
volunteered and pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable lay nearby.
They secured one end around Bingham's leg and then tied the other (!) to the
bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his
foot off at the ankle. He miraculously survived his fall into the icy
water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. Bingham's foot was never
located.
AND THE WINNER IS...
Zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt ( Paderborn
, Germany ) fed his constipated elephant 22 doses of animal laxative and more
than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm
finally got relief. Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was
attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved
beast unloaded. The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation
knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground where he struck his head on a rock as the
elephant continued to evacuate 200 pounds of dung on top of him. It seems
to be just one of those freak accidents that proves.... 'shit
happens'.
A Serious Man and My Coen Brothers Problem (Part I...will there be a Part II?)
(For HaZmora, Der Fersko, Le Malon and Der Schreiber)
I'm not sure A Serious Man is a great movie - it's probably too earnest for that, but there's the rub. The reason A Serious Man is among the Coen Brothers' best is because it's one of their only movies that does not smell of an elaborate game constructed by precocious children.
There are only two movies by The Coen Brothers I love. One is, of course, The Big Lebowski - which like every nerdy male I watched upwards of fifty times in college. Seeing it last weekend, I'm more convinced than ever that it is the Great Pinnacle of Western Civilization (...not sure how much I'm kidding). I've memorized whole scenes, gone to screenings, watched my friend win a Big Lebowski costume competition - John Manning did Larry's homework - and nearly paid an obscene sum to attend a Lebowski Convention in Chicago.
Lebwoski is one of the few cult films I 'get.' It has a perfectly incomprehensible story that serves as a mere hoop through which to put various LA lowlives through assorted berths of hilarity. It is a defiantly unserious movie, and because of its silliness probably a hundred times more intelligent than any number of their more solemn efforts.
The other movie I love, though not with the same intensity, is Fargo. It's not a unique opinion, everybody loves Fargo though mostly for the value of imitating the accent. Fargo is, in my humble opinion, a love letter to the rural Midwest: not just the unforgiving landscape, but also the congenial, unassuming people who populate it. Marge Gunderson (who has to be one of the greatest female characters in any movie) undergoes a series of situations that would disgust most of us from the banally gross to the unbelievably gruesome, and not once does she let her neighborly demeanor slip. Like our mind's-eye image of the perfect Midwesterner, the gentle Brainard demeanor is a survival tactic against the harshness of everything from their climate to human nature. Behind the Minnesota warmth lies concealed a cold, unbendable Detroit steel.
In both these movies, there are two unmistakable feelings missing in much else by the Coens - and those are the feelings of justifiability and plausibility. The former means the ability the ability to tell ourselves that this work is worth the time we spend on it. The latter means our ability to suspend disbelief and not say 'Yeah, right...' to ourselves in the middle.
Don't misunderstand: justifiability does not mean pandering, and plausibility does not mean realism. Justifiability does not imply that one should reject anything that makes you feel unpleasant or challenged. But it does mean that the meaning you derives from from a work of art is ultimately worth the struggle you might endure to absorb it. Likewise, plausibility doesn't mean that a work should be true to how reality operates. But it does mean that a work of art has to be true to itself.
In one way, art is no different than architecture or a mathematical equation. Parts that seem to have nothing to do with one another must be welded together in a way that makes sense. Without this, art has no plausibility, and therefore no justification for spending time with it because it unfolds in a flat, boring manner. A lack of plausibility and justifiability were - at least in my opinion - the irredeemable problems of No Country for Old Men.
When audiences spend two hours watching Llewellyn Moss squirm his way through a cat-and-mouse game against Anton Chigurh, they have a right to expect a resolution that implies more than the futility of their game - however craftily assembled the game might be. The game's outcome is of little importance, what matters is that the outcome has enough meaning to justify sitting through the monotonous unpleasantness of such a long chase. If the point of this movie is to show us that its outcome is foreordained, why am I watching it?
I couldn't help comparing No Country to a similarly long cat-and-mouse game in Hitchcock's North by Northwest. Hitchcock can match the Coen Brothers bleak for bleak (and then some). North by Northwest's chase is still more fraught with difficulty. Hitchcock does not take the shortcut of putting evil into a single personification like Anton Chigurh. The only appearances of evil in North by Northwest are personified by villains barely more corrupt than the movie's protagonist, Roger O. Thornhill (ROT), all of whom decide that their interests are served by ruining and killing him.
Both of these movies are chase movies. But both chases, in their own ways, serve as moral parables about the evil within men that make them want to act badly to one another. One comes out of North by Northwest with at least as low an opinion of human nature as one does in No Country for Old Men. But the difference lies in the tone of the chases. There is a justifiable meaning in the darkness of North by Northwest other than itself, however shallow. Whereas in No Country for Old Men, evil is its own justification. We're not meant to identify with evil, we're just meant to watch it happen. And that gets boring.
But North by Northwest gives us all the justification for watching evil we need, and that is to let us see how enjoyable 'being bad' can be. These are both movies about the darkness of human nature, but only one of them shows us that being evil can be enormous fun. As Roger Ebert (or Neal Fersko) says, 'a great film should never make you feel bad.' This is a sentiment I had difficulty with for a number of years, but I think I understand it better as I get older. This epigram does not mean that movies should be banned from making you feel bad things, but that movies should only make you feel bad with a greater purpose in mind.
Both The Big Lebowski and Fargo have exactly what No Country for Old Men lacks. And that is both a sense that we are being put through our paces with good reason, and a sense that the movie is interesting on its own terms. In the space of a few words of dialogue, or a single corner of a shot, both The Big Lebowski and Fargo are able to suggest more than they show: a character, a place, or a unique event in a way that suggests whole imaginative worlds. Worlds vastly more complicated than whatever we see on the screen. And yet the laconic characters of No Country for Old Men are deliberately as sparse as the desert they inhabit, suggesting nothing other than what our senses tell us is there. It may be a well-made film, but it's not imaginative by any definition that I understand.
I don't know if A Serious Man is on the level of either The Big Lebowski or Fargo, but it has far more in common with both of those than it does with No Country or a host of other Coen Brothers bores. I have no idea if any of these three are closer to the reality of the Coen's life experience than any of their other movies, but they certainly feel as though they are. Whereas in so many other movies, The Coens seem to take pride in displaying how paper-thin their plots and characters are, these three movies feel far more tangible. It's not because they're more realistic (anybody would have a hard time saying The Big Lebowski is realism), it's because they're more plausible. And the only reason they seem more plausible to us is because the filmmakers obviously believe that these movies are more plausible. Truffaut would always say that in a great film we have to either feel its creator's agony in making it, or the creator's joy. In most Coen Brothers' movies, we only feel their indifference. There is indifference aplenty in A Serious Man, but it never feels as though it comes from the filmmakers. The indifference is embedded into the various scenes of a movie that refuses to indulge the audience with easy answers. The shocking difference of this movie from their others is how comfortable the Coens seem with asking the questions that lead us to that conclusion.
For the first time in their careers, the Coen Brothers seem to have made a "Jewish" movie. But this does not portray the same Jews as populate the 70's mentality of Woody Allen and Philip Roth. Nobody is angrily rejecting their parents' fundamentalism, nobody rages about the awfulness of their childhoods, and nobody is making a show of pursuing their baser urges. This is the Jewish America of the mid-20th century, far closer to Saul Bellow's Herzog - and on a more primal level, Isaac Bashevis Singer's Gimpel the Fool.
These characters are a linear part of the Jewish experience. Rather than endure the chaos of an angry break with tradition, they painstakingly inch away. They allow themselves as much distance as good taste permits, and they silently accept misfortune as an integral part of their lives. Each character is reconciling Judaism with modernity as best they can, and every one of them craves approval for how they do so. But all the characters are torn: torn between doubt and belief, innovation and tradition; tangibles and spirit, resolvability and mystery. As Jews seem to have been from time immemorial, they are exactly like other human beings, only moreso.
This world is the unique crossroad of postwar Judaism - a middle-class soap opera that took place in gated suburbs. Here was the moment when secular Jews awakened to the fact that they were equal and needn't be separate. They were entirely American, yet entirely Jewish, existing in a members-only limbo between the shtibl and the bowling alley, their creed "There is no God, and He gave us the Torah at Mount Sinai."
It was a generation dancing on a latent volcano, unwittingly holding an untenable balance between assimilation and re-acclimation. In most of America, the world of 'seriously unserious Judaism' no longer means much. Because whatever else The Holocaust did, nothing contributed more to preserving the idea that one could (perhaps should) simultaneously be 'secular' and 'Jewish.' It is not within our lifetime that the decision of assimilation or re-acclimation has appeared in such stark terms, and the schism only grows larger as both intermarriage and orthodox birth rates continue to break their all-time highs. The Holocaust happened in large part because of the resentment engendered by successfully integrating of Jewish culture into the worldls. Ironically, killing so many Jews only served to embed Jews, Judaism and "Jewishness" far further.
But the Shoah is fast disappearing from living memory. And the answers faced by the question Jews round the world always ask "How should Jews live?" grows ever more stark. To live as a "Jewish-American" is not the harmonious blend of terms it may once have seemed. Larry Gopnik may have feared his goyishe neighbor, but he feared his own family and friends far more. These characters are all part of a community that to every objective standard seems American, and yet the elements within it are unmistakably different from anything other people would understand. There is little belief in A Serious Man, and less certainty. There is only solidarity and a community left to shield a person from tragedy. And when community fails (as it often can't help doing), there is no consolation left.
I'm not sure A Serious Man is a great movie - it's probably too earnest for that, but there's the rub. The reason A Serious Man is among the Coen Brothers' best is because it's one of their only movies that does not smell of an elaborate game constructed by precocious children.
There are only two movies by The Coen Brothers I love. One is, of course, The Big Lebowski - which like every nerdy male I watched upwards of fifty times in college. Seeing it last weekend, I'm more convinced than ever that it is the Great Pinnacle of Western Civilization (...not sure how much I'm kidding). I've memorized whole scenes, gone to screenings, watched my friend win a Big Lebowski costume competition - John Manning did Larry's homework - and nearly paid an obscene sum to attend a Lebowski Convention in Chicago.
Lebwoski is one of the few cult films I 'get.' It has a perfectly incomprehensible story that serves as a mere hoop through which to put various LA lowlives through assorted berths of hilarity. It is a defiantly unserious movie, and because of its silliness probably a hundred times more intelligent than any number of their more solemn efforts.
The other movie I love, though not with the same intensity, is Fargo. It's not a unique opinion, everybody loves Fargo though mostly for the value of imitating the accent. Fargo is, in my humble opinion, a love letter to the rural Midwest: not just the unforgiving landscape, but also the congenial, unassuming people who populate it. Marge Gunderson (who has to be one of the greatest female characters in any movie) undergoes a series of situations that would disgust most of us from the banally gross to the unbelievably gruesome, and not once does she let her neighborly demeanor slip. Like our mind's-eye image of the perfect Midwesterner, the gentle Brainard demeanor is a survival tactic against the harshness of everything from their climate to human nature. Behind the Minnesota warmth lies concealed a cold, unbendable Detroit steel.
In both these movies, there are two unmistakable feelings missing in much else by the Coens - and those are the feelings of justifiability and plausibility. The former means the ability the ability to tell ourselves that this work is worth the time we spend on it. The latter means our ability to suspend disbelief and not say 'Yeah, right...' to ourselves in the middle.
Don't misunderstand: justifiability does not mean pandering, and plausibility does not mean realism. Justifiability does not imply that one should reject anything that makes you feel unpleasant or challenged. But it does mean that the meaning you derives from from a work of art is ultimately worth the struggle you might endure to absorb it. Likewise, plausibility doesn't mean that a work should be true to how reality operates. But it does mean that a work of art has to be true to itself.
In one way, art is no different than architecture or a mathematical equation. Parts that seem to have nothing to do with one another must be welded together in a way that makes sense. Without this, art has no plausibility, and therefore no justification for spending time with it because it unfolds in a flat, boring manner. A lack of plausibility and justifiability were - at least in my opinion - the irredeemable problems of No Country for Old Men.
When audiences spend two hours watching Llewellyn Moss squirm his way through a cat-and-mouse game against Anton Chigurh, they have a right to expect a resolution that implies more than the futility of their game - however craftily assembled the game might be. The game's outcome is of little importance, what matters is that the outcome has enough meaning to justify sitting through the monotonous unpleasantness of such a long chase. If the point of this movie is to show us that its outcome is foreordained, why am I watching it?
I couldn't help comparing No Country to a similarly long cat-and-mouse game in Hitchcock's North by Northwest. Hitchcock can match the Coen Brothers bleak for bleak (and then some). North by Northwest's chase is still more fraught with difficulty. Hitchcock does not take the shortcut of putting evil into a single personification like Anton Chigurh. The only appearances of evil in North by Northwest are personified by villains barely more corrupt than the movie's protagonist, Roger O. Thornhill (ROT), all of whom decide that their interests are served by ruining and killing him.
Both of these movies are chase movies. But both chases, in their own ways, serve as moral parables about the evil within men that make them want to act badly to one another. One comes out of North by Northwest with at least as low an opinion of human nature as one does in No Country for Old Men. But the difference lies in the tone of the chases. There is a justifiable meaning in the darkness of North by Northwest other than itself, however shallow. Whereas in No Country for Old Men, evil is its own justification. We're not meant to identify with evil, we're just meant to watch it happen. And that gets boring.
But North by Northwest gives us all the justification for watching evil we need, and that is to let us see how enjoyable 'being bad' can be. These are both movies about the darkness of human nature, but only one of them shows us that being evil can be enormous fun. As Roger Ebert (or Neal Fersko) says, 'a great film should never make you feel bad.' This is a sentiment I had difficulty with for a number of years, but I think I understand it better as I get older. This epigram does not mean that movies should be banned from making you feel bad things, but that movies should only make you feel bad with a greater purpose in mind.
Both The Big Lebowski and Fargo have exactly what No Country for Old Men lacks. And that is both a sense that we are being put through our paces with good reason, and a sense that the movie is interesting on its own terms. In the space of a few words of dialogue, or a single corner of a shot, both The Big Lebowski and Fargo are able to suggest more than they show: a character, a place, or a unique event in a way that suggests whole imaginative worlds. Worlds vastly more complicated than whatever we see on the screen. And yet the laconic characters of No Country for Old Men are deliberately as sparse as the desert they inhabit, suggesting nothing other than what our senses tell us is there. It may be a well-made film, but it's not imaginative by any definition that I understand.
I don't know if A Serious Man is on the level of either The Big Lebowski or Fargo, but it has far more in common with both of those than it does with No Country or a host of other Coen Brothers bores. I have no idea if any of these three are closer to the reality of the Coen's life experience than any of their other movies, but they certainly feel as though they are. Whereas in so many other movies, The Coens seem to take pride in displaying how paper-thin their plots and characters are, these three movies feel far more tangible. It's not because they're more realistic (anybody would have a hard time saying The Big Lebowski is realism), it's because they're more plausible. And the only reason they seem more plausible to us is because the filmmakers obviously believe that these movies are more plausible. Truffaut would always say that in a great film we have to either feel its creator's agony in making it, or the creator's joy. In most Coen Brothers' movies, we only feel their indifference. There is indifference aplenty in A Serious Man, but it never feels as though it comes from the filmmakers. The indifference is embedded into the various scenes of a movie that refuses to indulge the audience with easy answers. The shocking difference of this movie from their others is how comfortable the Coens seem with asking the questions that lead us to that conclusion.
For the first time in their careers, the Coen Brothers seem to have made a "Jewish" movie. But this does not portray the same Jews as populate the 70's mentality of Woody Allen and Philip Roth. Nobody is angrily rejecting their parents' fundamentalism, nobody rages about the awfulness of their childhoods, and nobody is making a show of pursuing their baser urges. This is the Jewish America of the mid-20th century, far closer to Saul Bellow's Herzog - and on a more primal level, Isaac Bashevis Singer's Gimpel the Fool.
These characters are a linear part of the Jewish experience. Rather than endure the chaos of an angry break with tradition, they painstakingly inch away. They allow themselves as much distance as good taste permits, and they silently accept misfortune as an integral part of their lives. Each character is reconciling Judaism with modernity as best they can, and every one of them craves approval for how they do so. But all the characters are torn: torn between doubt and belief, innovation and tradition; tangibles and spirit, resolvability and mystery. As Jews seem to have been from time immemorial, they are exactly like other human beings, only moreso.
This world is the unique crossroad of postwar Judaism - a middle-class soap opera that took place in gated suburbs. Here was the moment when secular Jews awakened to the fact that they were equal and needn't be separate. They were entirely American, yet entirely Jewish, existing in a members-only limbo between the shtibl and the bowling alley, their creed "There is no God, and He gave us the Torah at Mount Sinai."
It was a generation dancing on a latent volcano, unwittingly holding an untenable balance between assimilation and re-acclimation. In most of America, the world of 'seriously unserious Judaism' no longer means much. Because whatever else The Holocaust did, nothing contributed more to preserving the idea that one could (perhaps should) simultaneously be 'secular' and 'Jewish.' It is not within our lifetime that the decision of assimilation or re-acclimation has appeared in such stark terms, and the schism only grows larger as both intermarriage and orthodox birth rates continue to break their all-time highs. The Holocaust happened in large part because of the resentment engendered by successfully integrating of Jewish culture into the worldls. Ironically, killing so many Jews only served to embed Jews, Judaism and "Jewishness" far further.
But the Shoah is fast disappearing from living memory. And the answers faced by the question Jews round the world always ask "How should Jews live?" grows ever more stark. To live as a "Jewish-American" is not the harmonious blend of terms it may once have seemed. Larry Gopnik may have feared his goyishe neighbor, but he feared his own family and friends far more. These characters are all part of a community that to every objective standard seems American, and yet the elements within it are unmistakably different from anything other people would understand. There is little belief in A Serious Man, and less certainty. There is only solidarity and a community left to shield a person from tragedy. And when community fails (as it often can't help doing), there is no consolation left.
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