Howard Jacobson
Howard Jacobson on his new novel, British anti-Semitism and calling himself the ‘Jewish Jane Austen’
Howard Jacobson is a funny writer. He has penned several comedic novels, and many commentators said his 2010 Man Booker prize-winning work “The Finkler Question” was the first humorous book to win the prestigious award for decades.
But Jacobson, one of the most celebrated authors in the United Kingdom and an outspoken liberal Zionist, has trouble finding much humor in the current state of a world dominated by politics and social media.
“People don’t get irony,” Jacobson, 77, said in a wide-ranging conversation with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Because of the internet and Trump and Brexit and all that, we’re living in very non-ironical times. The mode of discourse of the moment is you say something, and I say something back, and you say something back, and we are separate, and we brutally contradict one another.”
Nevertheless, conversation is a central part of his latest novel, “Live a Little,” which was published this week. In this case, it’s conversation between Shimi and Beryl (at times called “the Princess”), two 90-year-olds who (sort of) fall in love. Shimi remembers everything, while Beryl is losing her memory.
Jacobson spoke about the novel, on the anxiety of being a British Jew in 2019, his self-definition as the “Jewish Jane Austen” and much more.
