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Howard’s end

A Booker winner recalls life in Sydney
by
July 2022, no. 444

Mother’s Boy: A writer’s beginnings by Howard Jacobson

Jonathan Cape, $39.99 hb, 280 pp

Howard’s end

A Booker winner recalls life in Sydney
by
July 2022, no. 444

A Writer’s Beginnings begins: ‘My mother died today.’ One could be excused for thinking that one was reading not a memoir but a Campus Novel without the ‘p’, an experience that Howard Jacobson will suffer later in this book. Who could read this incipit without hearing the famous beginning: ‘Aujourd’hui maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.’ Jacobson, on the other hand, knows. He continues: ‘It is 3 May 2020. She is ninety-seven years old.’ I cannot recall whether Albert Camus specifies his protagonist’s mother’s age in L’Étranger (1942). A Camus novel is surely a Campus Novel without the ‘p’, the latter a sub-genre that Jacobson will both live out teaching English at a polytechnic in a defunct football stadium and come to write. Indeed, so insistent is his use of the locution ‘we’ll come to that later’ that one could be excused for thinking prolepsis a Finklerish (see below) rhetorical device. Give Howard Jacobson enough trope and he’ll surely hang himself.

Don Anderson reviews 'Mother’s Boy: A writer’s beginnings' by Howard Jacobson

Mother’s Boy: A writer’s beginnings

by Howard Jacobson

Jonathan Cape, $39.99 hb, 280 pp

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Comments (2)

  • This review had some very funny lines (t/rope!), and I'm all for a final flourish, but it is unclear what the last sentence is implying. Is it a joke insinuating that Jews are over-sensitive about anti-Semitism? That Jews are allowed to be over-sensitive if they are witty and artful in their paranoia? That Jacobson construed any disagreement with him during his time at USYD as anti-Semitism? That they are too many Jews in academia? Or that academics hate Jews? I'll stick with Mel Brooks for my Jewish jokes.
    Posted by Gabriella Edelstein
    06 October 2022
  • This might have been an engaging review had it gone on to actually consider the Jacobson memoir in question rather than discoursing on the long-past intra-academic hostilities engaged in by Anderson and Jacobson. Fortunately it does mention Jacobson’s first novel, which was a real hoot of satirical ribaldry regarding such arcane rivalries as to have me chortling and choking with laughter. It was written long before Jacobson started to take himself too seriously. Anderson could have navigated from there through Jacobson’s works to get to ‘Mother’s Boy’ and given your readers something of more informative substance.
    Posted by Leslie Rosenblatt
    03 July 2022

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