Touched at All Points

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by Howard Jacobson
Jonathan Cape, 2014, 327 pages, $32.99

The word Jew does not appear once in Howard Jacobson’s latest novel. Reviewers have compared the book with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley’s Brave New World, as a “dystopic” novel—presenting a Britain, after a cataclysm of sorts, which is now anything but a utopia. Nor, for a renowned comic writer, is there a single joke!

The novel is a challenge for the reader. It is not for someone who wants a romantic story with a neat beginning, development and ending—perhaps with a twist. It is hard work, because, in avoiding Jew, Jacobson challenges you to see where he is coming from and what he is getting at. As a result, your understanding of his plot will come about more or less quickly and easily—more easily if you are Jewish.

Lionel Trilling wrote in 1928, “Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.” As Jacobson showed in The Finkler Question, his being Jewish is at his very core. As a Jewish reader, “you are touched at all points and conscious” very early on in this novel. An obscure hint, here and there, and you realise that this is a post-genocide novel. Some of these allusions might elude the non-Jewish reader until they become blatant as Jacobson clearly identifies the reasons for Anglo-Saxon anti-Semitism, and the innate prejudices of a Christian society. He shows the Pauline rationalisation for despising Jews and everything they do and stand for. That his portrayal of Jews parallels the stereotypes and caricatures of Der Sturmer is no coincidence.

Jacobson explains the behaviour of anti-Semitic mobs when the forces of law and order are fearful of stepping in (or have no wish to). He also describes the rationale of the bystanders.

The genocide, which he refers to as WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED, has, over a few generations, had seriously deleterious effects on British society. A mandatory political correctness has been imposed, in a guilty attempt to eradicate the past. Everyone says “Sorry”, even if they do not know what it is they are apologising for—because, after a couple of generations, they simply do not know WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED.

Distinctions between people have been done away with. Everyone is forced to adopt a Jewish surname, with an element of choice. No one can now be identified by name. The past, together with the Jews, has been obliterated. Records, if not destroyed, are unavailable to the public. Genealogical tracing and historical research are impossible. IF IT HAPPENED is the big lie, now inculcated into successive generations—as is happening today, in respect of the Holocaust, in Iran and many Arab countries.

But the “civilisation” of this new society has been badly damaged by the absence of Jews. Art, music, theatre—“culture” in all its manifestations—have vanished. Society has become violent, with rudeness and bad temper (and murder) the norm. The obscure authorities, “Ofnow”—a neat tribute to Orwell—have come to realise that something must be done. What they have decided, and what they achieve through their network of Stasi-like informers, is revealed in the last few pages.

The writing, as one would expect, is superb. The structure has been carefully thought out, with different characters, in differing roles and generations (as revealed in illegally hidden family archives), adding their “side” to events, both past and present. Both the intention of Ofnow and the outcome of that intention emerge only gradually. It is no coincidence if they make you think of Oliver Cromwell.

With his hints at current antiIsraelismus, Jacobson shows the transition from traditional Christian anti-Semitism to the world’s Christian and Islamic rejection of Israel as a homeland for Jews.

Do not expect to put down this book and think, “That was a good read.” But you will go on thinking about it for quite some time. And, if you are Jewish, or a non-Jew with a sympathetic understanding of the millennia of Jewish persecution, you will not emerge from this novel feeling good.

Together with the writings of Freud, Einstein, Kafka and Philip Roth, this book brings Trilling’s truism to life.

Peter Arnold lives in Sydney