About book For The Relief Of Unbearable Urges (2000)
This book of short stories is about tradition, obligation, and external sources as meaning to our lives. I've been thinking about choices made under the umbrella of the first two, and personal responsibility for the last, and realize how many of our major decisions to marry, to follow in a well-worn professional path, our choice of friends, and life's meaning are based on religious mandates. How we measure up determines our perceived levels of guilt or happiness, our self-esteem or negative judgment, and the determination of everlasting life, for some.Nathan Englander, in nine stories about Jewish lives past and present, offers fodder for my quest for answers. How do the rigors of religion deal with circumstances outside the text? In "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" the prescription for his wife's abstinence is to circumvent obligation to the Torah and the community's traditions and hire a prostitute. This is a novel resolution, full of irony, and certainly secular in today's world. A woman's sense of self in "The Wig" is neutralized by the tradition of modest dress, but she remembers her beauty from the past, keeps up with modern styles through magazine photos, and defies the mandates in an effort to satisfy her interest in physical beauty. The dictates of her faith stifle creativity and impede her actualization. She must be hypocritical to be fulfilled.In the last story, "In This Way We Are Wise" the complexity of living in an undeclared war zone is presented as conflict both external and internal. Jerusaleum's perpetual unrest is the antithesis of what the international community imagined when Isreal was mandated. A bloody "refuge" from the horrors of WWII to the uncertainty of one's safety at a favorite cafe could be perceived as little progress, but the obligation for Jews to support the State is clear. To me, there are great consequences for following the obligations of institutions, for embracing strict traditions of a religion and for looking for meaning in life outside oneself. It takes alot of responsibility and courage to define yourself by your own choices, values, and morals absent external sources but well worth the effort.Highest Recommendation! Favorite!
I recently chanced across this volume of short stories in a second hand book shop in Geneva. The title caught my eye and sounded promising. So did the description of these nine tales revolving around all aspects of Jewish life. I was put off though by the superlatives on the jacket, but I thought I would read it all the same. Media review hype always makes me wary... Englander can write there is no question about that. However, there is nothing “heart-wrenching” or “hilarious” about what he writes. His use of satire actually makes me physically cringe when he writes about Yiddish writers living under the Stalin regime shortly before their execution, Hasidic Jews being herded on to a train for deportation to Auschwitz or the menstrual cycle of a Hasidic women and her husband's “unbearable urges”. His characters are almost too large for life and jump in your face virtually stifling you. His intellectualism sometimes verges on arrogance. Finding humour in grave situations and signaling how with creative resources you can overcome great or even fatal difficulties is, for me personally, not “a revelation of the human condition” as the The New York Times Book Review prophetically claims. A grossly disappointing read with a unpleasant after-taste full of the author’s disdain for some aspects of the world he depicts.
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This guy's first book? Damn, I'm jealous. If you only read two of these stories, I recommend "The Twenty-seventh Man" and "The Tumblers." These stories are remarkable for their historical sense of authenticity. I believe in the characters Bretzky and Zunser and Korinsky, and I am fully in emotional harmony with the idiot savant Pelovitz. Englander said of this story that the rounding up of 26 Yiddish authors did occur and he has take the liberty to bring this tale to life and add in Pelovitz to boot. There is an aura of historical realness to the story that made me look up the authors to see if they in fact did exist--that's how convincing Englander is. Ultmately, I marvel at an author so young who can write so old. The book is an artifact of a wise, weathered soul that flowed through a young man's pen.
—John Jeffire
The stories here aren't character driven as much as they are idea driven. Some of the ideas are brilliant. The setting is always deeply Jewish, but I think those who don't have an understanding of Orthodox Jewish culture can still strongly identify with the lives of the people portrayed. Englander owes a deep debt to Bernard Malamud in a good way. He may well be his worthy successor. These stories often begin with a bang. Englander doesn't waste time on setting. Some of these stories had me smiling with admiration right from the first paragraph. For example, who would possibly think of taking the stories and characters of Chelm folklore and updating them to the Holocaust where, in some strange way, the Chelmites manage to survive because of their foolishness? That's just stupendous and wonderful.The execution of these stories is very good with unique details added to amuse and keep reader interest. Englander is not afraid to use shtick even in the most serious of settings. In this work, his voice isn't quite mature, and the narratives often wobble a bit. The language isn't quite as sharp as it could be. But Englander is clearly a talent even in this first work of fiction. His subsequent novel, The Minister of Special Cases, showed that he was capable of building on the talents developed here. Englander is one of my favorite young novelists writing today.
—Stuart
I have zero patience for short stories. But a friend stood in a bookstore, and handed me this. I opened it and the first thing I saw was a perfect sentence. So I bought it.The sentences are so well crafted that when I stumbled on one that was less than succinct halfway through it stood out. I stopped, analyzed it, and realized it was probably different intentionally -- since it was an entirely different emotional frame for the person in the story. And yes, I'm deep in the study of such matters at the moment, but I think the anecdote relays just how good the writing is in this compilation. These are funny and poignant and relevant.Favorite stories, interestingly, weren't the ones mentioned on the back. The first one, The Twenty-Seventh Man, was just. 27 writers sent to their death together; the 27th is a mistake of sorts. Please do yourself a favor and read just this story if you don't have time for the full volume. The Gilgul of Park Avenue is also delightful.
—Jaime
