Review of “Howl” by Howard Jacobson – A Tragic Portrait of a Jewish Man’s Despair | books

HHoward Jacobson writes characters at their wits’ end; These characters are usually men, and these men are usually Jews. In addition, and problematically for them and for everyone around them, their collective intelligence is capacious: it can be easily expanded to allow idiosyncrasies to turn into neuroses, and busyness into obsession. Jacobson’s men do the opposite of suffering in silence (although they do that too); They frequently indulge in exhausting and exhausting arguments, arguing their point of view long after their interlocutors have longed for sleep, and not in the enjoyable way that all parties might hope for.

By making direct reference to another Jewish writer’s testimony about pain, Howell seems to make his intentions clear from the beginning: we exist in a world of mental dissolution, of a strained and subsequently fractured consciousness. But instead of would-be enlightenment seekers, as Allen Ginsberg described them, who disappear into the volcanoes of Mexico and “scatter their semen freely” across rose gardens and cemeteries, Jacobson’s avatar is a rather primitive suburban elementary school principal, driven to distraction not by free love and copious hallucinogens, but by seething rage and agonizing guilt.

The extent to which both feelings—and their countless variations and subgroups—were dormant within him is one of the novel’s mysteries, but the catalyst for their current manifestation is quite clear: the events and fallout of the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, as experienced by a British Jew living and working in London. Ferdinand Draxler, whose extravagant loves include his actress wife Charmian, their academically minded daughter Zoe, and the correct dissemination of grammar, turns away at once: his staff room, his family, and his city are divided. On the one hand, Ferdinand’s travails were ironic and Prufrock – the pleasant Saturday afternoons he had spent buying chocolate at Fortnum & Mason and strolling through the Royal Academy were now subject to disruption by pro-Palestinian marches. But it wasn’t long before he was confronted with the image of his daughter chanting loudly amid protests and tearing up photos of hostages.

Jacobson has written and spoken about how disconnected he felt from his country, his community, and his fellow citizens during the brutal conflict in Israel and Gaza, and he has drawn scorn for doing so; In Howl, he explores not just the feeling of being out of touch with the era, but the experience of renewed fear of displacement and violence provoked by anti-Semitism. He knows, one suspects, that some readers will find this utterly infuriating, if not morally repulsive, and he confronts them head-on; In Ferdinand Draxler, he creates a man who believes with all his heart that October 7 allowed hatred of Jews to flourish without limit, and who argues—for anyone who listens, and even more so for those who don’t—that it provided an excuse for anti-Semites to do what they wanted to do all along.

Unsurprisingly, Howl is a very uncomfortable novel. It is also, like most of Jacobson’s work, a comedy. So, Ferdinand’s vice principal is of course a convert to Judaism and now rejects Israel, not to mention his boss. Of course his wife is a Gentile who treats her husband with an extraordinary degree of forbearance and tenderness as he sits “stirring,” and lets out his pain by frantically trembling, jiggling, and knotting his handkerchief; Of course he repays her by committing infidelity – in mind and heart only, but still – with an ethereal Jewish woman he encounters in a park, who turns out to be loved by his brother, the formerly religious and now infuriatingly laid-back Isaac. And of course, behind them all stands Motte, a Belsen survivor whom Ferdinand feels it is his duty to protect from the swastikas and sub-murals that appear on her garden gate.

How do we balance our sympathy for Ferdinand’s pain and torment with our alienation at his increasingly impulsive and risky behaviour, as he wandered the streets of London looking for examples of anti-Semitism, or took his young Jewish pupils on graffiti expeditions? He’s clearly going crazy. However, it is difficult to deny his frequent response that he is experiencing a period of madness.

It is his deep affinity for grammar—particularly the rustic sentence about a honeysuckle hedge and a pair of nesting nests that he was fond of analyzing—that gives us the clue. He is a man who believes that everything – subject, verb, object – has its right place, its right relationship to the elements next to it, a logic that not only ensures its own function, but creates the conditions for thought. Get the rules right, and the ideas will follow; If we get it wrong, the confusion becomes unnavigable, chaotic. Draxler finds himself in ungrammatical times, without any primer to help him escape them. He’s not alone out there, no matter how much he may feel like it.

Howl by Howard Jacobson is published by Jonathan Cape (£20). To support The Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply.