At the New York State Writers Institute’s annual Albany Book Festival, a panel discussion on “girls coming of age” was cancelled. Because two panelists had pulled out, saying the slated moderator, author Elisa Albert, is “zionist.” So there was a big blow-up, hurling words like “anti-semitism” and “freedom of speech.” The panel topic had nothing to do with the Israeli/Palestinian issue. How do you justify reneging on a gig because of a participant’s views on an unrelated subject? This kind of behavior enflames divisions and mutual hatreds. A sign of the times.
Another panel was headlined “religion.” I’m against religion, but didn’t boycott the event. (Actually I’m a glutton for punishment on this subject.)
The discussion included Sarah McCammon, an NPR journalist who’s covered the Trump campaign. Where she encountered many Evangelical Christians — like those she grew up among. McCammon has written of her struggles trying to reconcile her continuing religious beliefs with, well, reason.
In the Q&A I spoke of a Muslim student from Africa I’d mentored, who similarly wrestled with her faith’s contradictions. After intense discussions, she finally became an atheist. Suddenly, everything made sense to her. I recommended that path to McCammon.
The other panelist was writer Shalom Auslander. From a very Jewish family, dysfunctional in other ways too. He soon spurned them completely. His animus remains palpable; also against God, whom he considers an asshole and prick.
Auslander seemed a very droll, funny, sardonic man. The kind who’d write a book titled Feh. An expression of disgust. Seemed a great title, so I decided to buy the book, for a birthday gift. Maybe a dubious idea.
At the signing table, I asked Auslander to inscribe it to a woman’s name. I explained: we’d lived together for a decade, she left to marry someone else, then 33 years of no contact. Then an e-mail pops up. Turned out her guy was a total monster.
“Wow,” said Auslander, “that’s quite a story!”
And I hadn’t even mentioned she needed money.
I read the book. It’s a memoir, interspersed with very short stories. Each ends with the words, “The End.” The book’s ethos might be summed up with the ancient aphorism, “Life sucks. Then you die.”
Those words weren’t actually in the book, but it’s full of lines exactly like that. Auslander drenched in self-loathing, directing the word feh at himself. His name is uncannily apt: an auslander translates as someone from a country “outside” — as the author feels himself to be vis-a-vis life itself. (And “Shalom” can mean either hello or goodbye!)
Auslander is not just down on religion, but also capitalism and, indeed, anyone successful (though as a writer he’s way more successful than me at least). Facile targets.
At one point, though, Auslander suggests that perhaps people aren’t feh but merely meh. And while the Bible’s God is always punishing us for transgressions, maybe that book’s real hero is humanity, with God being the bad guy. “What if it’s God who is feh?”
There is a lot of humor — but it’s so mordant, so relentlessly negative, I found it wearying.
(An aside: that word “mordant” just popped out as I was writing. Appropriately, I think. That’s how I write, almost like an AI, just spitting out what seems like the next appropriate word in a sequence.)
Nearing the end, I scribbled the words “enough already,” but then the book’s tone swerves. Auslander stumbles upon an antidote to his fevered cynicism, in a pastor spreading goodness and charity. But then just a few pages later — COVID hits. And more acerbic prose.
However, that’s not the end either. It’s not exactly a happy ending, but Auslander posits that “feh” directed at ourselves is a story we tell ourselves; but there’s a different story to be told.
I pondered what to write in the birthday card for my ex, to accompany this book. I decided on, “Read it and rejoice at not being this guy!”
And what are the next words I should write here?
The End.