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See Bill Roorbach's interview with me at Bill and Dave's Cocktail Hour http://billanddavescocktailhour.com/table-for-two-an-interview-with-john-clayton/#more-2631 |
Comments and ReviewsMitzvah Man
A Review in Commentary,, January, 2012 Commentary 69 The January fiction chronicle By D.G. Myers Now that most American Jews have settled comfortably into a secular way of life without much fear of religious intolerance (except from other Jews), it’s not entirely clear what cultural function Jewish novels are supposed to perform. Jewish writers satisfy the demands of residual Jewishness by dreaming up a search for Eastern European roots (Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated) or cooking up an imaginary world of stateless exile (Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union). Others mine the Jewish past —the tragic Jewish past (Julie Orringer, The Invisible Bridge) or the heroic Jewish past (Alice Hoffman,The Dovekeepers).. Just recently, though, the Jewish religion has returned to Jewish fiction, and thank God for that: Jewish identity has its source in a Jew’s religious calling—it’s an app,as the saying now goes, not a feature—which can be reactivated at any moment. . . . . Clayton writes about Jews like himself—Jews who long for holiness in a world with little patience and less appreciation for the longing. Mitzvah Man (Texas Tech University Press, 268 pages), his fourth novel, is about a Jewish superhero. Adam Friedman is not a comicstrip character who does battle with villains in his underwear. He is, instead, an ordinary middleaged Jewish male, a semi-wealthy software consultant living comfortably on a cul-de-sac near Harvard University, who may or may not perform miracles and who may or may not be a contemporary prophet. Adam is at his 25th high school reunion when his beloved wife Shira is killed by a drunk driver. He is left with a 14-year-old daughter, Lisa, and a grief that grows as messy as his uncut beard of mourning. At synagogue one Shabbat morning in late spring, he listens closely to the weekly Torah portion, which tells how the Israelites followed God’s presence through the wilderness. Adam feels a shiver of recognition, and rushes home to tell Lisa that they are leaving on a car trip. They will get in their Camry and just head out of town, without destination. “We put ourselves in God’s hands,” he explains. “We let the Toyota decide. But it’s not really the car, you understand?” Lisa is alarmed, but agrees to go along for fear that her dad will be locked in an insane asylum if she tells anyone. Thus begins Adam’s adventures with “maybe the hand of God guiding him.” They stay briefly on Cape Cod, where they talk about God’s plan on the sand dunes. “You see, our true life is somewhere else,” Adam tells her. “That’s what we’re looking for. The treasure. Our life.” So they head off again—this time to New York. There Adam intervenes to save the marriage of his oldest friend. Back home in Cambridge,Lisa gives her father a T-shirt that says “Mitzvah Man .” “I am now officially a superhero,” Adam says proudly. He wears the Mitzvah Man tee under his dress shirts instead of tzitzit, the fringes Jewish males are commanded to wear underneath their clothes. Clayton’s premise is also emblazoned on that T-shirt. What if it really were possible for a modern man to be guided by God’s hand and to intervene in human events like a superhero? Mitzvah Man cleverly leaves open the question whether Adam is God’s prophet or God’s fool. Maybe his deeds are accidents, but maybe they’re not. “It’s not crazy to know God is flowing through all things and I can ride the flow,” Adam says, although he immediately adds: “That’s metaphor,not religious boogie-woogie.” When he rescues a young woman who is being raped in a Boston park—he fights off her three drunken attackers while she gets away—he becomes locally famous. A homeless man at his front door asks for a handout and a Lotto tip; he bets Adam’s birthday and hits the jackpot. Adam foresees that a man in the synagogue is about to suffer a massive heart attack, and saves his life by warning him. Adam places his hands on the head of a boy suffering from leukemia, and almost immediately the boy is relieved of pain and goes into remission. He begins to collect followers: “Mostly ragged folk. Some sit cross-legged on the sidewalk in meditation, some chant. They bow to him when he goes out; they follow to touch his sleeve.” A Cambridge policeman warns him to watch out for crazies. “Remember John Lennon,” he says. His Orthodox sister-in-law scoffs at Adam and claims he’s trying to reinvent Judaism. His friends are squeamish and uncomfortable with Adam’s God-talk, replying politely in the noncommittal voice of unbelief. Adam doesn’t sound pompous or fake to himself when he talks too openly of God (“Well. Maybe a little fake”). He is embarrassed to receive credit that should go, he says, to God. He tells a Boston radio talk show host: Look. I’m not deciding to do good. I’m trying to perform mitzvot, to follow God’s commandments. I’m trying to listen, to do what God tells me. It’s the exact opposite of a superhero. A Batman or Superman, they’re full of themselves. I’m trying to be filled up by God. That Adam is Jewishly half-educated,that he reads Jewish texts only in translation and is fluent only in the language of Conservative Judaism, serves unexpectedly to make his transformation even more convincing. But the modern secular world has no place for a messenger from God. The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families concludes that Adam is delusional and removes Lisa from his home. To get her back, Adam must stop performing deeds of derring-do and prophecy, or at least pretend to. Clayton is not sure how to end Mitzvah Man: those who “have intimations of God’s world, the true world, usually end up having to fall back into the world of compromise,” as he says elsewhere, and the compromise is no happier in literature than in life. But what Clayton does know for sure, and what he demonstrates powerfully in the course of his novel, is that unlikely events are likely to occur when a man puts himself in God’s hands. That is more than enough to sustain this wise and deeply satisfying novel—yet another example that the great subject of Jewish fiction going forward is the relationship between God and man. Early Comments on Mitzvah Man: "Pow! . . . Zowee! . . . . Whoosh! Mitzvah Man is the new-look superhero for the modern age, where a damaged man without super strength can still perform righteous deeds and change the world. Novelist John Clayton knows that the biblical prophets didn't want the job, and the same is true of our heros--whether they are super or merely ordinary. With great imagination and lyrical wit, MITZVAH MAN will restore your faith in the miracle of simple goodness, and remind us all that the impulse to rescue can both save a life and transcend the agony of loss--even without having to leap tall buildings in a single bound." —Thane Rosenbaum, the author of THE GOLEMS OF GOTHAM and SECOND HAND SMOKE John J. Clayton is back and more luminous than ever, deeper, too, and funnier. Mitzvah Man is mightier than mere mortals, especially in the super-hero t-shirt his daughter has made him. Plus, he's got the guidance of Jewish law to power his good deeds, a righteousness funded not by pride but by mourning. Clayton's people are as real as my friends and family, and give me as much to worry about and even love. Reader take heart! Your cries have been heard! Mitzvah Man is here! —Bill Roorbach, the author of TEMPLE STREAM, THE SMALLEST COLOR, BIG BEND “A fascinating, extremely well-crafted, important work . . . about middle-class, assimilated Jewish American life, and its real need for connections to a faith that has come to seem almost irrelevant. —Sanford Sternlicht, author of THE TENEMENT SAGA INTERVIEW ABOUT MITZVAH MAN in The Jewish Ledger at http://www.wmassjewishledger.com/2011/09/18/q-a-with-john-j-clayton-amherst-writers-modern-jewish-super-hero-mitzvah-man/ Interview and Reviews of Wrestling with Angels INTERVIEW with Francesca Rheannon for Pacifica on WRITER'S VOICE: http:www.writersvoice.net. The podcast is at: http://www.writersvoice.net/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/Clayton.mp3 Publisher's Weekly Review of Wrestling with Angels: Clayton’s new stories, gathered here with the stories from earlier collections Bodies of the Rich and Radiance, show a steady, assured hand, delivering an exceptional and gratifying body of work. “Cambridge Is Sinking!” typifies his early writing, where young, menschy hippies reluctantly let go of their politics and community in the face of day-to-day struggles, ruminating on jobs, graduate degrees and rich uncles as they try to find direction. As Clayton’s early characters turn away from their idealism, his later ones turn toward a larger search for meaning and often toward the divine. (In his author’s preface, Clayton writes “I hope for Jewish and non-Jewish readers; but I speak as a Jew.”) In “History Lessons” Daniel Rose takes his young son to the neighborhood where he grew up, uncovering a considerable sense of loss (endemic to Clayton’s stories) and a great divide between the father and son. Failed marriages, bitter children and terminal patients mark many of the tales: in “The Contract,” Max pores through holy books while his wife, Natalie, succumbs to cancer; the family finds comfort in the prayers’ familiarity, but their meanings remain obscure. Clayton repeatedly explores a limited set of situations and emotions, but he is a master of his material. (Sept.) |
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