Anglo Habitation: Black Judaism

"Who cares what model the weapon is?" -- Leon Wieselter

I did not mind Roth's specificity over Simon Axler's shotgun in The Humbling. This is not to dispute Leon's churning efforts at literary distillation. I am a failed woman with birth brain damage we classify as cerebral palsy, but do the same thing Leon does, think in the hues of comparative terms, and I do not understand the American Jewish Left's argument with itself. Not for lack of trying, or not so much trying as exposure--perhaps too much of it-- inclusive of the particularly Jewish obsession with Henry James-- where the fuck does that come from? I often ask. How did Jewish academic culture appropriate a fairly affluent but rather fucked up and somewhat not well educated Anglo-Irish snobbish old fart who could never make up his mind and had a great deal of enmity toward American Jewry, as he saw it, in the late Victorian era? My belonging or enmity or both belonging and enmity with the academics surrounding those of us obsessed with the Master is trumped up. I know it. I am neither friend nor foe to Greg Zacharias, and my speculation about his use of anti-depressants exposes me for what I am: a silly cripple who isn't trying hard enough. I wrote to a more accommodating member of this sometimes queer community that I was writing an essay on Lampedusa "for myself," implying that if I ripped my fucking soul apart over James that it was out of obligation to the dead who aren't even necessarily my dead.

I liked Roth's faulty little book, more than Wieselter's nearly overweening deconstruction of it. The Humbling is a satirical take on the pernicious influence of Jewish culture in the arts and the American entertainment industry, and reiterates what Roth achieves with The Human Stain. Hopkins was miscast to play a high yellow masquerading as a Jew who is murdered by Richard Harris in Anti-Semitic mode. This whets my curiosity over the genius of Philip Roth. I also did not read hostility to homosexuality in Pegeen's boomerang relationships. I read a send up of Jewish mothers, of infantile narcissism, an encapsulation of the customer review I may write for Amazon in a concomitant act of phlegm melt and decomposition. Green dildo in a harness?

I think not, but if you like Roth, his send up of the psychiatric modality, one I lived with my mother's continuous hospitalizations, points to my lack of belief in counseling therapy. Not that ableism can't kill me at any time.

Measured Proletarian Treads

My efforts were more vain than insouciant this morning, trying to coax the old charger prong to stay still, connecting to the now ten year old diode, and I struggled for 45 minutes, gave up, pleased that the old kindle ceased crashing, for which I blame my foster child. She gnaws; she is not Joey, and poor aunt is sick from her battle with the little stray; in one of my compartments, Marie is blamed for my dead cats perched on my shoulder. Trust me. You do not have to ridicule me for my love and anxious stress and three thousand fucking dollars blown on a tonka fluffy grey baby boy. I sufficiently ridicule and beat myself, and hope my fucking pedestrian suburban family respects my wishes when the time comes and buries his ashes with me. I struggle not to condemn his little brother to an early euthanasia in the washing my hands of any further feline responsibility, and I repress being furious with my tea cup jaguar for the damage of her canines. Occasionally, she purrs on my chest, and is gradually becoming more attached, but my grief bleeds and it will not clot any time soon. Speaking of which, little Vincento caught a mouse from beneath the radiator, growling as his brother used to, so I knew, and don't care that when he kills it, if it is murdered in view, I will have to dispose of the rodent. kimmy seems excited and wants to share the catch. I could not do food shopping today, pondering the money I spent on this Joyce group and why I spent it, understanding my father's approbation, but wondering if I am indeed insane, rolling home with a gimp, woman about my age, who enrolled from Camden; I did not realize there were any whites left in that city, reminding myself that I cannot sit next to Lance next month when we meet again. I can hear better if I sit across from him. I told the woman my corner wondering if that was wise even as I spoke, but I was off my game last Saturday, disengaged, almost a month to fill myself in, Google Books is helping. A light turned on for a TNR column in their voice, similar to Leon's, had my rhythm but had to leave the chair, and hope I can find it again, not quite sharing his pessimism about writers and content in the digital age other than as it pertains to my declining future; if by some miracle of a Jewish wonk leaf curdle they ever take a piece from me, it won't change squat, or launch me like it did Jeffrey Toobin. The independent press might kiss my ass for a short while like they did when I earned my big local byline in 05. I am drowning, and it makes no difference, does it?

"In periods of difficulty and at special times of the year, the Greeks nominated a scapegoat – a cripple or beggar – who was stoned and then cast out of the community to suffer in the wilderness on its behalf."
Jenny Diski, Tragedy's decline and fall, New Statesman