I’ve finished part III of Joshua Cohen’s Witz, no small feat given that I’m now more than 300 pages into an 800 page novel in which 1 page of Witz represents 2 pages of any other self-respecting novel. In other words, it’s a long book. While such a book can tax the reader’s patience and, in a world that seems hellbent on taxing even our time, it challenges the reader to carve out enough space in enough successive days to finish the damn thing. Even so, I’m a stubborn soul and am determined to climb this Everest of a book, and then to piss from the summit … just because. Although I haven’t finished the book, mustering the commitment to do so gives me a clue as to what the book might be all about. Call it my working hypothesis: commitment.
What I know so far: Benjamin is the 13th and only male child of Hanna and Israel Israelien. He is born fully formed, complete with hat, beard and glasses. In a strange biological quirk, Ben’s foreskin falls off all by itself. It’s a regenerating foreskin that periodically falls off. It’s a good thing, too, because by the time of his bris, a catastrophic millennial disaster has struck: all the world’s Jews have mysteriously died – all save the first-born males – which creates a problem given than Judaism is matrilineal. In time, even the first borns die too, leaving behind Ben, a full-grown newborn who knows little about the ways of the world, and an old man named Feighenbaum who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and has accidentally locked himself in the Israelien’s washroom during a Shabbos dinner and doesn’t come out until the whole disaster has passed over, so-to-speak.
The book is full of low and high, witz and wisdom, childish alliterative associations and sweeping lyricism, slapstick and tragedy. I’ll say more about it in later posts as I read on, but for now, here’s a sampling of some brilliant writing:
“While praying, no one knows what they’re saying not because no one knows the language of prayer, but because no one knows themselves, and so they pray …”
“… the sun … appearing as if only to receive the glory of the horizon’s siegheiling …”
“Being begotten by the begetted begetist whose begattable begettance begatted Big Beggeters and their Big Beggeterers begotally, whose begattability was begotted by other begotterers begatally, and yet other begatterers besides, whose begottance, begettance, or begattance begetally begot he who begat he who beget the begotting of the begotist so burdened with the begetting of the begatist beburdened again with the begetting of this Benjamin …”
“To live is to transgress, existence itself a species of violation; day passes through hours into days, into a lifetime spent in darkness under the sun that must shine always, as it has no will of its own.”
“look at this eye chart, read the last line aloud, S Z C Z E D R Z Y K; do you know what it says, asks the doctor, know it, the immigrant says, he’s my uncle!”
“… silence rents to own …”
“Understand, this is how we once spoke of dream, both as a visitation of the night and as the mark we hoped to make upon the forehead of the day.”
“… the world might’ve been created in seven days, but who wants to live without electricity or shoes …”
“And so it might be appropriate, with everything relative and all Einsteins now dead, to engage in what’s been called the pilpulistic: to pull on our beards, to tug at our locks so split hairs as befitting us lesser creations, sundering God Himself, Who parted the Sea of Reeds only for us to cross over into the wilderness, still barren of our freedom.”
I suppose, if I never get through the book, I can always use it in lieu of Kevlar – not that I’ll ever have any need for Kevlar, but apparently Witz stops bullets.