An Audience with Howard Jacobson

On 7 May, as part of our L’Chaim programme, we enjoyed An Audience with Howard Jacobson (in conversation with Rabbi Laura and the shul’s book club chair, Judy Woolfe).

Howard Jacobson was everything we could have wished for in a guest speaker: opinionated but funny, warm, passionate and playful. Some of these attributes were teased out by Rabbi Laura as she invited him to introduce himself to the packed shul. Cue anecdotes covering everything from his birth as WWII bombs fell on Manchester to his father’s chaotic stage act.

On the subject of writing, his passion took hold. ‘Who cares about plot? The first thing I look for in a book is vitality…the vitality of the language… a book that sings with the voices of Shakespeare and Chaucer and therefore honours and employs the language that has done such good work.’

Asked about being described as the ‘English Philip Roth’ he replied: ‘I don’t think of myself as the English Philip Roth. I think of myself more as the Jewish Jane Austen. I love the Englishness of Jane Austen… the way she deploys language.’

There were questions about Howl, his most recent book, as well as questions about the current normalisation of the language of hatred towards Jews. Could he see anything in the Jewish character that gave cause for hope? Howard said that Jews find hope in two places: within ourselves and through the self knowledge that we achieve through comedy.

On the contrast between the support that we have experienced and the silence of so many: ‘I believe there is a lot more sympathy and interest in Jews out there than you would gather from the ‘experts’ on the subject. They make me feel all will be well – or as well as anything ever can be.’