Okay, so that ending? What’s the deal. Join David, Heidi, and Tim as they try to understand what Cohen is doing. Lots of conversation about nihilism in this episode. Thanks for listening!Close Reads is a community-supported endeavor. Please subscribe to make sure we can keep on (while also getting access to subscriber-exclusive content). Thanks!
I think I would see it as nihilistic (rough definition as seeing nothing as mattering) if I thought the book was really just presenting two alternatives: Be insane zealots or empty cowards. But I don't think a book has to contain its ideal.
For example, in Brave New World, I don't think Huxley is arguing you either have to be inhumanly primitive or inhumanly "advanced" -- he uses the primitive character to critique the brave new world (even a radically ignorant almost-not-human character can see how the new world is lacking something fundamentally human). Although my book club disagreed and the consensus was that the brave new world was clearly superior to the primitive society, so we should aspire to that...
I'm hesitant to call it nihilistic. I think partly because the identity of the Jewish People since Genesis has been of a people wandering from God and in search of home (or maybe more biblically the idea of the promised land). The modern American Jewish experience certainly looks different than in other times throughout history but the characters in this story seem to still fit into that narrative.
But honestly I could easily be convinced differently hah
Is there a certain (ha) Jewish type of nihilism? I’m sure it’s written about or named somewhere, but I feel it when I read our watch anything Jewish-American such as Chaim Potok or A Serious Man, which I think was mentioned in the podcast and I was strongly reminded of.
“This round of education/counter-education was enough to drive any kid nuts, especially a kid as serious as I was, predisposed to credulousness and literality.” Rube’s MIL indirectly jabs him about Corbin being a place for “serious work”. Edith says, when they were young, “We were serious people, and believed in things. In ideas. So sincere.”
Jewish American life is portrayed as an unmoored “wandering” in the uncertain chaos outside the promised land. Yet in most Jewish works it’s not quite nihilistic, because God is supposed to be somewhere, even if agnostically distant. And there is communal life as a nomadic anchor to Jewishness. While The Netanyahus has none of these things and seems wholly nihilistic, can it be Jewish at the same time? Maybe it’s more of a paradox. Can Jewishness exist anymore? Can it exist without God? It does, obviously. But, as all the characters in the book show, it also doesn’t. God is present in the novel by the struggle with Jewishness itself. But He’s also glaringly absent.
This is fascinating to me, and I wish I was better informed on religion and philosophy!
I’m not sure if I would label this book “nihilistic” or not. One thing I do know for certain—I cringed enough times while reading this book to last me for the rest of 2023.
Nihilism /The sex scene at the end, I feel is a reflection of the disaster that results from removing the religious/moral center from Judaism. Rube is nominally Jewish, Ben-Zion is politically/academically Jewish, Edith’s parents are culturally Jewish (a la Mrs. Maisel), and Rube’s parents are the most pious offering of the book. The price of American assimilation is chaos because tradition is unmoored. When one removes God (and the inherent moral order of God) from their worldview (for whatever reason: choice, laziness, distraction, etc) and don’t teach the following generations as commanded, can one be shocked not to find God (and His fruits) there?
I think I would see it as nihilistic (rough definition as seeing nothing as mattering) if I thought the book was really just presenting two alternatives: Be insane zealots or empty cowards. But I don't think a book has to contain its ideal.
For example, in Brave New World, I don't think Huxley is arguing you either have to be inhumanly primitive or inhumanly "advanced" -- he uses the primitive character to critique the brave new world (even a radically ignorant almost-not-human character can see how the new world is lacking something fundamentally human). Although my book club disagreed and the consensus was that the brave new world was clearly superior to the primitive society, so we should aspire to that...
I'm hesitant to call it nihilistic. I think partly because the identity of the Jewish People since Genesis has been of a people wandering from God and in search of home (or maybe more biblically the idea of the promised land). The modern American Jewish experience certainly looks different than in other times throughout history but the characters in this story seem to still fit into that narrative.
But honestly I could easily be convinced differently hah
Is there a certain (ha) Jewish type of nihilism? I’m sure it’s written about or named somewhere, but I feel it when I read our watch anything Jewish-American such as Chaim Potok or A Serious Man, which I think was mentioned in the podcast and I was strongly reminded of.
“This round of education/counter-education was enough to drive any kid nuts, especially a kid as serious as I was, predisposed to credulousness and literality.” Rube’s MIL indirectly jabs him about Corbin being a place for “serious work”. Edith says, when they were young, “We were serious people, and believed in things. In ideas. So sincere.”
Jewish American life is portrayed as an unmoored “wandering” in the uncertain chaos outside the promised land. Yet in most Jewish works it’s not quite nihilistic, because God is supposed to be somewhere, even if agnostically distant. And there is communal life as a nomadic anchor to Jewishness. While The Netanyahus has none of these things and seems wholly nihilistic, can it be Jewish at the same time? Maybe it’s more of a paradox. Can Jewishness exist anymore? Can it exist without God? It does, obviously. But, as all the characters in the book show, it also doesn’t. God is present in the novel by the struggle with Jewishness itself. But He’s also glaringly absent.
This is fascinating to me, and I wish I was better informed on religion and philosophy!
This is so good!
Re. Idea that Shakespeare didn’t write the plays attributed to him... read this: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jan/08/sherlock-holmes-of-the-library-cracks-shakespeare-identity
I’m not sure if I would label this book “nihilistic” or not. One thing I do know for certain—I cringed enough times while reading this book to last me for the rest of 2023.
Nihilism /The sex scene at the end, I feel is a reflection of the disaster that results from removing the religious/moral center from Judaism. Rube is nominally Jewish, Ben-Zion is politically/academically Jewish, Edith’s parents are culturally Jewish (a la Mrs. Maisel), and Rube’s parents are the most pious offering of the book. The price of American assimilation is chaos because tradition is unmoored. When one removes God (and the inherent moral order of God) from their worldview (for whatever reason: choice, laziness, distraction, etc) and don’t teach the following generations as commanded, can one be shocked not to find God (and His fruits) there?
Does anyone know what happened to the podcast for 9-12? I cannot find it on Substack or Apple Podcast. My last two entries are Finis and Q&A thread.
9-12 is the same as “finis”. We just call it for the final chapters of a book. Aka: “to the End”
Thanks!
I was thinking Finis was a complete summary of 1-12 - I’ll go back to sleep now :-)