This series of posts refers to an article written by Jonathan Jones in The Guardian.
The original article can be found here:
The truth is that I wanted to write a series of posts about the book Small Gods for some time now; Jonathan Jones's article is just an excuse. Perhaps "excuse" is not the right word. Perhaps the right words are "a way in". Jones' article showed me what people don't understand about Pratchett. Jones thinks that Small Gods contains 'clever wordplay', or in other words, that the book is a more or less random collection of jokes, with a more or less shared theme.
I don't know why Jones chose to compare Small Gods specifically to the novel Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. But I thought about this for a while, and I think I can try to speculate. In my humble opinion, Jones sees these two books as 'comic novels written about religious matters by people who are atheists'. And if so, when Jones compares the two, he concludes that: 'Pratchett tells jokes' while 'Roth says something meaningful about real life'.
I personally think that both tell jokes, and both also say something meaningful about real life. In my opinion, what Pratchett says is incomparably more dynamic, diverse, and sophisticated than what Roth says. If in Jones's view, Roth manages to create some structure of real life—let's say the structure of a Shtibl (a small prayer house) - then Pratchett is completely flat, perhaps comparable to a carpet. But in my opinion, Roth can still be compared to a Shtibl, but Pratchett should then be compared to a cathedral with a rich heritage - say, the Sagrada Familia.
In my opinion, it is not difficult to see the richness of the structure in Pratchett's novel, if the reader is open to the possibility that such richness exists. In other words, the reader can only find a rich structure if they believe such a structure actually exists. Jones does not think it exists, and therefore he did not find it. I and many other readers, believe it does exist, and therefore we found it.
I intend to write a series of six posts: one will be dedicated to my opinion about the novel Portnoy's Complaint, and five posts will be dedicated to various aspects of the novel Small Gods and will explain part of its structure. Naturally, this post will contain spoilers for Portnoy's Complaint, and the following posts will contain spoilers for Small Gods. Nevertheless, I am convinced that I will leave most of the beautiful parts of Small Gods in their place, and they will only be aparent upon reading the novel itself.
And now we move on to the work of this post: My Portnoy Complaints.
First Complaint: Roth's 'Unique Language'
I obviously read the book from start to finish, and I would not have done so if not for Jones' article. The book is not without value, and I should therefore thank Jones for the experience. Thank you.
The book, on the other hand, and probably Roth himself, is very misogynistic and racist. The reading was unpleasant, and the book could be dismissed on this basis alone, but that would be too easy, and therefore I will not do it.
In his article, Jones argues that: "You cannot say: 'Pratchett writes really ordinary prose yet is a literary genius.'" and by implication, Pratchett's prose is ordinary, while Roth's prose is special. I will discuss Pratchett's prose in the next post, but in this post I want to first argue that Roth's prose is not that special.
The novel Portnoy's Complaint is a first-person novel. The book's protagonist, Alex Portnoy, speaks with his psychologist. One of the jokes is that at the very end of the book the psychologist answers something like: So [said the doctor]. Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?. That's funny. To an extent.
The novel was published in 1969, and the time of the monologue's occurrence is 1966. It is written in the style of Jewish American English from New York (in our case, New Jersey). In this sense, the language of the novel is not unique at all; on the contrary, it belongs to the genre of films and books such as: Fiddler on the Roof, The Chosen by Chaim Potok, and of course Woody Allen, Larry David, and Jerry Seinfeld also wrote in this genre. In my opinion, even though the novel is a relatively early manifestation of the genre, it does not innovate, and its prose is in no way unique within the genre.
The specific kind of Oedipus complex that the novel's protagonist has is also present in the protagonist of the film New York Stories, but in my opinion, in the film we see a funnier manifestation of the phenomenon, which also contains greater compassion for the mother figure.
Second Complaint: Scope
Roth reveals a nice variety of characters in the novel. First and foremost, himself, but also his parents, his sister, his Uncle Haymie, his aunt, his cousin who was killed in the war, and a variety of girls the protagonist had along the way, and that's about it.
But there is something limited and limiting in such a description when it is done in the first person. We know what the protagonist thinks of his mother, and to some extent, what she thinks of him. I am convinced that if the mother figure spoke in her own voice, we would receive a richer and more interesting report about the protagonist. The same can be said about the father figure. We can speculate about the relationship between the father and the mother, but those are distant echoes. We have no idea about the relationships between the sister and the mother, or the sister and the father. Or between the father and the uncle, etc.
Despite the claim that the series Seinfeld is 'a show about nothing', it deals with a relatively wide range of topics from the lives of bachelors in New York: parking, Chinese restaurants, trips to Los Angeles, and of course, dates. Not all the characters in the series are Jewish, and that is perhaps part of the great popularity the series enjoyed, and still enjoys.
In contrast, the episode 'The Pen' (Season 3 Episode 3) is an exceptional episode in the series, as it is the only episode in which the character of George Costanza does not appear, and one of two episodes in which the character of Kramer does not appear. The plot of the episode takes place in Florida at Seinfeld's parents' home, and within a short sitcom episode, it manages to show us to a whole world of interactions between the characters of the retirement home.
Third Complaint: The People Who Dwell in Zion
In the novel, Roth describes the lives of Jews in the New York area in the fifties and sixties, with a few childhood memories from the forties. In those years, Jews sought recognition and suffered from discrimination in many real ways.
Towards the end of the second chapter, the following quote appears:
"Doctor Spielvogel, this is my life, my only life, and I’m living it in the middle of a Jewish joke! I am the son in the Jewish joke—only it ain’t no joke! Please, who crippled us like this? Who made us so morbid and hysterical and weak?"
Towards the end of the novel, Alex Portnoy visits Israel. This is Israel before the Six-Day War, and does not include the Old City of Jerusalem, or the Golan, or Judea and Samaria. Alex Portnoy has an unsuccessful encounter with a female soldier, and then an unsuccessful encounter with a kibbutz member.
Towards the end of the last chapter, the following quote appears:
"inherently the system in which I participate (and voluntarily, that is crucial too—voluntarily!), that that system is humane and just.
This is the kibbutz member's claim to Portnoy, and Portnoy has no answer to this claim, nor to all of her other claims.
We have a Jew living in the Diaspora (in exile?) and living through all the complexes of that way of existence, and convinced that Jewish life in Israel is free of these complexes. Mr. Roth gives up in advance on the wish to tell me, a Jew living in Israel, anything whatsoever about the Jewish existence here. Except perhaps: "You are perfect. Keep it up."
I am convinced that even Mr. Jones does not think a message like this is 'great literature'.
And just as Mr. Jones recommended another book instead of Small Gods, I will also recommend a book instead of Portnoy's Complaint. The novel Et Hazamir (the time trimming) by Haim Be'er also describes a Shtibl, but a Shtibl within Israel. A Shtibl that changed greatly in 1967. Haim Beer shows us this change, and thus the novel may speak to us to this very day! (sadly it was never translated).
