Sorry to go on but I'v just started another book by Philip Roth in which he develops a strange conjunction, meeting someone exactly like himself who purports to be him.
This literary concoction allows a number of contrived discussions to take place which normally aren't available to us in the normal course of our life and it offers a fascinating interrogation of that persona we know as ourself.
Imagine being able to interrogate yourself, compare , and reveal the worst in yourself by this fictional mirror. Hubristic without doubt but if you have enough confidence to shine a light on your soul then the exercise must have merit.
The book is about his Jewishness and the contradictions of being a Jew in the comfort and security of growing up in the USA compared to living in Israel and closing ranks on much of the world in an effort to protect what you see as your birthright. The diaspora, the pogroms and especially the holocaust have created a victim mentality in which the Israeli feels it within its rights to justify and do what ever is necessary to stay in Israel. He metes out brutality in the knowledge that history is on his side. The brutality shown by the Nazi and others, let alone the attempt to exterminate the Jews has given the leadership in Israel a sort of moral blank sheet in which their suffering expunges the suffering of, for-instance, the Arabs in Palestine.
Roth argues the case from a number of angles, all of them jewish in an attempt to explain the dilemma a nation founded on religion (Gods chosen people) finds itself today.
Part of his argument is that the Israeli has distorted the Jewish mission, a return from the Exodus and that the only way is to re emigrate back into a benevolent world, places such as modern Europe and of course the USA where their skills and genius are needed.
The assumption is that in Israel/Palestine there can be no solution other than higher walls and greater brutality until someone, in a messianic fit of madness pushes the nuclear option.
No comments:
Post a Comment