Reviews, Vol I, Issue II
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German philosopher Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel once said, “We learn from history that we don’t learn from
history,” which, besides being a clever bit of wordplay, is also profoundly
true.
Those that believe that the Holocaust
could never happen again---HERE and NOW---are clearly delusional and/or naively
optimistic. A rising tide of Neo-Nazism in Europe, growing anti-semitic
hostilities in the Middle East, the Islamic State a.k.a. ISIS: anyone with eyes
and ears can see the same nationalism and racial hatred that bred the monsters
of Germany in the 1930s.
Today, on many city streets worldwide,
small race wars continually play out between trigger-happy cops and angry black
teens, with neither group willing to listen to the other. Whether it’s black
vs. white, straight vs. gay, conservative vs. liberal, Gentile vs. Jew,
Christian vs. Muslim, it’s the same old hostilities playing out in the same old
horrible ways.
Hegel was right. If we have learned
nothing else from history, it’s that we have learned nothing from history. This
is why Howard Jacobson’s latest novel, “J”, is so apropos.
Jacobson’s novel envisions a future
supposedly several generations removed from our present and yet near enough to
be terrifyingly prescient.
In this future, the past is nonexistent.
Nostalgia is illegal. Popular media is watered-down to sentimentalist pap.
Certain topics are not to be discussed. Specific events in history never
happened, according to official reports. It is like this to protect the
populace from a horrific truth; an attempt to erase from the collective
unconscious an event so bad that it is referred to as WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT
HAPPENED.
The utopic peace is gradually
unravelling, though. Neighborly resentments are creeping into the idyllic towns
and villages. Suppressed hostilities and incidents of rage and violence are
slowly on the rise. Murder---a crime thought to be virtually eliminated---has
returned.
The average citizen is at a loss to
understand what is happening. Kevern Cohen, a college professor and amateur
carpenter, is one such citizen. He has just met and fallen in love with the
woman of his dreams, Ailinn Solomons. He is also a minor suspect in the murder
of another local woman. He has no idea that he is actually the subject of a
government-sanctioned experiment.
Part “Truman Show” and part “1984”, “J”
extrapolates a dystopic future wherein society faces the consequences of a
regrettable decision made by its ancestors and tries to correct and unsettling.
Hidden within plain sight in the novel
is the future plight of the Jewish people. It’s not good. Nowhere in the novel
does Jacobson ever use the words “Jew” or its variations or the word
“holocaust”: perhaps the first clue. The second major clue lies in the title.
Whenever Kevern utters a word that
starts with the letter “j”, he involuntarily puts his finger in front of his
mouth, as if shushing himself. He doesn’t know why he does this. His father and
mother always did it, and he learned the behavior from them, but he has never
really questioned it. Intuitively, he knows it has something to do with WHAT
HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED, but he doesn’t want to examine it too fully. To do so
is not only frightening, it’s also illegal. It doesn’t, however, stop Ailinn
from investigating the strange behavioral tics of the man she loves. Of course,
what they both discover is something that neither could have imagined.
Jacobson’s tightly-constructed novel
unravels itself like a murder mystery. It’s a suspenseful and intriguing
thriller and, at the same time, a brilliant speculative examination of
irrational hatred on a global level. It is not implausible. Indeed, its plausibility
is what makes it such an important book.
Reviewed
by Scott Richard Rhee
Scott lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
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