They say there’s a blog about everything, and yesterday at The Home of Schlemiel Theory a writer going by the user name mfeuer2012 published a piece “On Cynthia Ozick’s Denunciation of Henry Bech: John Updike’s Literary Portrayal of the Jew as Schlemiel,” the title of which may go a long ways toward explaining.
Ozick called Bech “theologically hollow” and according to the author “her reasons for choosing such a term and making such a trenchant criticism of Updike’s attempt to represent a Jew are noteworthy. They give us a sense of how Ozick—and others—might criticize many of the schlemiels we see in literature and film today. It also gives us a glimpse of her criterion for what makes for a plausible Jewish character in Jewish American fiction.”
Citing other novels as well, the author writes, “Ozick’s gloss on these ‘de-Judaicized Jewish novelists’ foreshadows her rant on what is missing not just in Bech but in most Jewish writing today: knowledge of Jewish history. But this omission is not done out of neglect so much as what Ozick calls ‘autolobotomy.’ Wondering at this caricature of the Jew, Ozick suggests we think about how this would sound if this kind of portrayal were done with respect to real African-Americans.”
Later: “Updike, argues Ozick, loves Bech most when he is ‘thoroughly de-Beched’—when ‘Bech is most openly, most shrewdly, most strategically, most lyrically Updike’ (119). And this happens when the ‘Appropriate Reference Machine’ (ARM from here on) breaks down. At these moments of failure, Updike the theologian takes over.
“And in these moments, when the ARM breaks, there is a brief exposure to a Christeological kind of epiphany. However, this doesn’t transform Beck. Rather he returns to a kind of state that is . . . comical.”
Read the entire article.
Hello – I am the blogger who write this piece. And were you to go to my “about” section, you would see that my name is Menachem Feuer. I am a professor of Jewish Studies at York University and this blog is a part of a book project and a larger project dedicated to the Jewish comic character otherwise known as the schlemiel. Please take note!
Perhaps as Updike neared his end, he put forth his final work on Saint Paul with a less occluded zeal. Despite the best kumbaya ecumenical efforts we aspire to in order to make the world a less hostile place, the faith of a zealot is to a very large degree exclusive. This could be why his last notes to this, his most thinly veiled evangelical work is embargoed until 2029. Cynthia Oczick and others might feel him to be not only misogynistic, misanthropic, and xenophobic but at least in Oczicks mind anti-Semitic as well. Updike had previously transgressed when he had contrasted the “transcendent” nature of Christianity with what he perceived as the “too this worldly” nature of Judaism.
Sometimes it is more difficult to extinguish the fire of the Holy Ghost than that of a Molotov cocktail. Waiting 25 years for publication might keep some from feeling the heat.