With gallows humor, UK author Howard Jacobson takes on post-Oct. 7 ‘bloodlust’ for Jews |
LONDON — Howard Jacobson knew the day after the October 7, 2023, massacre that he had to write a book.
But the acclaimed British novelist had a problem: the “absolutely white fury” that he felt in the aftermath of the attacks — not the right state, he says, in which to begin writing.
It was less the “awful” and “heartbreaking” violence visited on southern Israel that provoked his anger — some 1,200 people were slaughtered amid acts of horrific brutality in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror onslaught, and 251 abducted to the Gaza Strip — but the unfolding scenes he was witnessing closer to home.
“The aftermath was rage that there were people out there, who one would normally have thought of as civilized and educated, who rejoiced in it,” recalls Jacobson. “It was bloodlust, and it seemed to me that it was bloodlust directed against the Jews.”
That bloodlust dominates his newly published novel, “Howl.” It’s the story of Ferdinand “Ferdie” Draxler, the Jewish headteacher of a south London primary school, who slowly unravels as he observes the world’s reaction to the barbarity of Hamas’s assault.
“I knew I had to make Ferdinand half mad because otherwise I would give him my anger,” Jacobson tells The Times of Israel. “You have to move from anger to something else — otherwise, it’s incoherent and more of a tract than a novel.”
Jacobson says he initially considered a work of nonfiction entitled “A History of the Jews in 100 Lies.”
“All I could hear was lies,” he says. “I’d sit in front of the television and scream at the television: ‘Lies. Those are lies. Those are lies.’ It was the lying, more than anything else, that I couldn’t stand. The lying about what Zionism was, the lying about how Israel came into existence … and [then] there were all the old libels coming back, including, of course, the oldest and most horrific and most absurd libel of all, the blood libel.”
Thankfully for fans of Jacobson’s prize-winning fiction, he decided to opt for a novel.
“I’m happiest when I’m writing a novel,” he says. “I like my own mind and voice more when I’m writing a novel.”
The decision to make Ferdie feel as if he’s going mad is a well-trod Jewish literary tradition, says Jacobson. Citing the protagonist of Saul Bellow’s 1964 novel “Herzog,” he continues: “I immediately thought of the words of Moses Herzog: ‘If I’m out of my mind, it’s all right with me.’”
‘I immediately thought of the words of Moses Herzog: ‘If I’m out of my mind, it’s all right with me’
‘I immediately thought of the words of Moses Herzog: ‘If I’m out of my mind, it’s all right with me’
Jacobson is well-known for his ability to find the comic and absurd in almost any topic. “Howl” is no exception; something which, he says, some early readers found surprising.
There is, of course, a darkness to the humor. On the evening of the attacks, Ferdie hears neighbors dancing, celebrating and shouting, “Gas the Jews,” in the street. He decides to confront them — albeit in a very English manner.
“Could you tone it down........