Shalom Auslander: Beware Of God

[beer good]

OK, this collection of short stories is one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. Laugh-out-loud-on-the-subway funny. Auslander, apparently, was raised in an orthodox Jewish family and so the stories in this book are definitely coloured by that; imagine a mix of Lenny Bruce and Kurt Vonnegut with a sprinkling of Douglas Adams and you won't be far off.

The stories, like the title suggests, deal a lot with religion. And not in a very reverent way. Auslander skewers a lot of what he seems to see as the more absurd aspects of what human beings will do and claim it God's will; you've got a guy trying to buy supplies for an ark at Home Depot, you've got a married couple where the wife grows sick of her husband's piety and tries to get him to sin more than her, you've got the obvious question of just what the heck you do with a golem once you've animated it and it starts to obey everything you say in great detail, you've got a chimpanzee in a zoo suddenly being infused with judeo-christian guilt and shame...

Look at us, Bobo thought, shaking his head sadly. A bunch of fucking monkeys. Where is our dignity? Where is our pride? Where are our pants?

Though at the same time as being hilariously funny, there's a point to much of it. His target isn't belief as such, but more the more negative aspects of organized religion - intolerance, fundamentalism, xenophobia, endless and violent arguing over exactly HOW to love your neighbor. Some obvious influences are Bill Hicks, Kafka and Samuel Beckett; the situations are absurd(ly funny), but the underlying sentiment is very serious. It's hit-and-miss, like all short story collections, but highly recommended.

Funny sidebar: I was reading it on the subway, like I said. Just as I'm reading the story "Somebody up there likes you" (in which God and Lucifer go on a Sopranos-style hitman mission to take out a poor guy who according to the Big Plan was supposed to die weeks ago, but survived because God failed to take into account the improved side protection in his Volvo) a street musician comes on the subway and starts playing the theme from "The Godfather". Now that's creepy.

 

[Shade]

Thanks for flagging this up, bg. I'll have to look out for it.

 

[Gem]

Thanks Beer good.
You're second only to Kenny Shovel in adding to my tbr pile.

 

[raffaellabella]

Thanks for posting. I've been looking for a good, funny read.

 

[beer good]

Foreskin's Lament - A Memoir, Shalom Auslander.

And I'm a little torn. On the one hand, I'd sworn off BOATS (Based On A True Story) books a while ago, after a few too many true tales of overcoming hardship/drugs/abuse/athlete's foot had made me want to tell every writer of such books that they deserved every bit of it. Plus, when telling the story of his life Auslander does tend to violate the "Thou Shalt Not Provide TMI" commandment a few too many times.

On the other hand, he has a saving grace (heh) which is his humour - furious yet sharp, bitter yet hopeful. Growing up in a very strict Jewish community and a very strict household, he was told from infancy that not being 100% kosher in every way would have God The Father smite him, and shown at home that not keeping 100% in line would have Father The God beat him or dump a bowl of hot soup over him. The result is a person with God-based paranoia; the problem isn't that he doesn't believe in God - the problem is that he's convinced that God a) exists and b) is out to get him. If he eats a burger, someone he loves will die. If he reads a Penthouse, someone he loves will die. If he watches the Rangers game on Sabbath, God will make them lose. As he puts it,

I suffer from a metaphysical form of Stockholm syndrome. Held captive by this Man for thousands of years, we now praise Him, defend Him, excuse Him, sometimes kill for Him, an army of Squeaky Frommes swearing allegiance to their Charlie in the sky. My relationship with God has been an endless cycle not of the celebrated "faith followed by doubt," but of appeasement followed by revolt; placation followed by indifference... The people who raised me will say that I am not religious. They are mistaken. What I am not is observant. But I am painfully, cripplingly, incurably, miserably religious (...) I believe in God. It's been a real problem for me.

The borders between personal testimony and satire are blurry, to say the least. At his worst, he comes across as a miserable, bitter whiner; at his best, he's a brilliant black humourist, cutting to the core of both his personal and society's problem with the things we do and blame on God. He's a modern man, he knows how everything works, yet when he finds out he's about to become a father, he panics. If he has his son circumcised and accepted into his family, will he himself eventually become that which he's been trying his entire adult life to get away from? If he doesn't, will God punish him by killing his son or his wife in childbirth? Etc.

I've tried to forget, I've tried to reframe Him, to rewrite Him, to move on. I read Sam Harris, I read Richard Dawkins. It all makes sense, but none of it helps.

The ending is uplifting, in a darkly neurotic way. After comparing himself to Isaac earlier in the book - the kid whose father tried to kill him in God's name - he sees himself as Moses. The foreskin in the title isn't just his Jewishness, it's him and his wife, both coming from abusive backgrounds, cut off from their pasts, on their own diaspora, and having to build a brand new promised land free of everything they fled from. Like Moses, he doesn't think he'll actually get to live there himself, but he's determined that his son will make it.

And Moses did say, - Blow me, and he died there in the desert with a smile upon his face.

I'm still sworn off BOATS, but I think I'll allow myself to break that commandment for Shalom Auslander. His non-fiction memoir isn't quite as funny as his fiction debut, Beware of God, but it makes up for it in honesty and tenacity. 4/5.