When Cohen published the pathologically unreadable 800-page monolith Witz in 2010 with Dalkey Archive, a flabbergasting slurry of manic logorrhoea intermittently brilliant and excruciating, there was no indication as to how Cohen might harness his astonishing stamina for further high-voltage literary wowness. The answer was Book of Numbers, a violently readable novel that shirked thickets of opaque wtf in favour of turbulent meta-antics, formal play and punnilingual wizardry, and established him...

I enjoyed Cohen's style of Jewish humor here, but others might object to the portrait of Netanyahu or the mixture of high and low comedy.

'“The world is full of real events, real things, which have been lost in their destruction and are only remembered as having existed in written history.”Readers who have read Joshua Cohen’s early ambitious 800-page “Jewish Ulysses” titled Witz or have at least flipped through it and have been judged by its thick spine on the shelf ever since will not quite recognize the author of The Netanyahus. The same can even be said for readers of his more well-distributed if less shaggy novels Moving Kings...

Now a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.Joshua Cohen’s latest novel, The Nethanyahus is subtitled “An Account of A Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family.”It is an odd - and to me uneasy - mixture of campus novel, non-fictional exposition and a rather odd attack on famous real-life family by creating a fictional version of them to ridicule.The author explains in the afterword it is inspired by a true story told to him by

Rube and the YahoosI once made a lame joke in Torah study to the effect that it was a good thing Reuben got himself disqualified in favor of Judah; otherwise, instead of "the Jews" we would have been "the Rubes."So when Ruben Blum, the narrator and protagonist of this story, and also the first Jewish faculty member Jew ever at the fictional Corbin College, is called "Rube" by his department head, I thought it was just another microaggression. But, no: that's Ruben's nickname; that's what he call...

Oh, those Netanyahus. Their part in this spliced work of fiction and non-fiction is apparently the non-fiction. Benjamin, I'd guess the most famous one, has a bit part here, but the story kind of explains how he became who he became.The other part, the fiction part, is the narrator and his family who have the Netanyahus foisted on them. Except that narrator, Ruben Blum, is really based on Harold Bloom and his for-real encounter with those Netanyahus, so that part is kinda true too.This is invent...

Update: Interview w author in Paris Review 2021-06-23:https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2... A gem. I just loved every sentence. As I said in an update, this reader was entranced by the reined-in but evident erudition, but most of all by a similar sense of how the author is in complete control of an artistry that always feels like it could burst out of the strictures he chooses to impose upon himself. May not read Witz, but will definitely go on to more Cohen.

There is a lot to dig in here and I am looking forward to talking to others who decide to pick it up. On a prose level it's pretty solid and the humour, although at times more subtle than I was expecting, was actually pitch perfect when interjected.

this is so much fun

I never feel properly equipped to talk about Cohen’s writing; his intelligence and wit are so powerful they kind of terrify me. This is simply a masterfully written novel. Involving, surprising and very funny. (May write more later.)I received an advance review copy of The Netanyahus from the publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions.TinyLetter | Linktree

4.5 stars, rounded slightly down. A superb blend of crude farce and political satire, laying bare the cultural divides on either side of the Jewish diaspora, between assimilated American Jews and battle-hardened Israelis. Cohen also painfully probes the deep psychic scars borne by professorial mediocrities and scholarly pedants who populate academia (not to mention their wives and families). Beyond Cohen's two hilarious parodies of tendentious recommendation letters and epic-fail job talks, this...

I fell behind I did. And this highly entertaining novel reminded me suchly. Indeed I do need to keep abreast of each and every Cohen book. Recommended, should you need to hear it from me.

Rollicking slapstick campus novel meets Benzion Netanyahu history lecture on the Iberian Jews meets repurposed Harold Bloom anecdote - I have no idea how this book works, but it genuinely does- you learn by it and are stressed out by it in equal measure. Cohen is a brilliant, funny writer, and that shines through.

The Netanyahus is a very clever book. It is clever in the words it uses (I had to look up several words as I read). But it is also clever in the conflicts it brings about, including in the reader’s head.Our narrator is Ruben Blum. In an afterword, Cohen explains that the book is based on an anecdote told to him by Harold Bloom, the literary critic who died in 2019 and who called Cohen’s Book of Numbers one of the four best books by a Jewish-American novelist (I have no idea what the other 3 book...

Oh if only I had a better education, if only I were a religious scholar. Still this book was wonderfully funny. But it would have been so much funnier if the scholarship were not over my head. I envy the laughs of people more educated than I and especially people who work in academia.The 1960 college campus novel is based on a true incident when Ben-Zion Netanyahu, father of the embattled Bibi of current history, auditioned to teach at a small American college (the nonfiction is detailed in an a...

42nd book of 2021. Artist for this review is photographer Jonathan Brand.4.5. It's blowing a hooley outside tonight. Over the last few years (this is unrelated to the hooley) I've mostly avoided reading new contemporary fiction, mostly because I never think it's any good. This year I've been trying slightly harder, and with mixed results. I've read some fairly mediocre novels like Real Life, Writers & Lovers, The Vegetarian, etc. I mostly say unsavory things of new literary fiction, which never

I found the comical portions of the novel too slap-sticky and absurd to be humorous (though the dialogue is clever and amusing) but when Ben-Zion is at the college Cohen gives him strong and even elegant arguments - arguments that made me reconsider and to some extent readjust my ideas and feelings about the state of Israel.

3.5 starsExtremely erudite Jewish campus farce? Fiction/anecdote mashup featuring Harold Bloom’s story of meeting Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, transposed onto a middling American academic serving reluctantly on a hiring committee as the only other Jew in town?I think I’m not qualified to judge this one.I will say it was great fun to read, at least the first half, what I’m assuming to be the more fictional half, because Ruben Blum is not Harold Bloom, and I very much enjoyed the building of his c...

At times, a hilarious and bizarre story of the Netanyahu family, best known due to the 9 year old Benjamin's later incarnation as the PM of Israel. Based on a true story related to the writer by the late literary giant Harold Bloom.A short novel by the brilliant writer, Joshua Cohen which wets my appetite to take on his longer well received novels.

Hilarious, smart, challenging, edifying, just a great read. This is more of a 4.5, but I rounded up because it is so damn fun.This is my first book by Joshua Cohen. When I started looking into him I saw a number of comments indicating he is the new David Foster Wallace. I see what the commenters are saying, but I don't agree. DFW is a midwestern boy no matter how much time he spent in East Coast ivory towers. I see a lot more Jonathan Lethem here than DFW. I absolutely get that quoting another r...