An American Novel in Oz

I frequent book stores. Despite downsizing for a move to Australia (I had 66 boxes of books, now I'm down to 24), I still buy books, though far more often for my e-reader, so I'll not have to add it to my shipment. I still have more than I could ever hope to read. Because my book collection is coupled with a Kurdish and Belouchi rug collection, my ex-wife once described my decor thusly: like a library for Bedouins. But when I see a book by someone I know, and especially if I like their writing, I buy it. When perusing the shelves at a bookstore in Fremantle, I was pleasantly surprised to see Allison Amend's Enchanted Islands. I have two reasons for buying it, one, Allison used to be friends, and perhaps still is, with my ex-wife when we lived in New York. Second, she's an excellent writer. I really enjoyed her short story collection Things That Pass for Love and so far, I'm really enjoying this novel too. Luckily, I can leave this one at my girlfriend's house in Australia, when I'm done with it. Ever since grad school, it has been my habit to read several things at once. Recently I've read Phillip K. Dick's Ubik. I read it quickly, as it was very gripping and mind-blowing. The humor resonated with me--for example, a door charging fees to open and close--but the novel exhibited a characteristic of 1970s male thinking--when introducing female characters, rating their attractiveness as if that's important. My father used to do this--and probably still would if he was alive--ah the stories I can write of the discomfort my father could cause... I've digressed like Tristram Shandy, also like the narrator of my forthcoming novel Forthcoming. The point is this, the last two years I've been slowly plodding through Phillip K. Dick's Exegesis in which he tries to make sense of his mystical experience. He expresses some captivating ideas--that this world is a simulation, that there's an intelligence outside of space and time trying to reach out to us--that creation runs backwards in time rather than forwards--and at times he will paint a picture very similar to medieval Neoplatonism as if the world emanates from God's being. At times, he resorted to Christological explanations and descriptions, and there he loses me. But I have a similar tendency to try to understand my own mystical experiences through Judaism. Do I think Judaism is true? Mostly not. The archaeological evidence suggests homo sapiens has been walking the planet over 100,000 years, perhaps close to 250,000 years. And God only shows up for the last 3800 years? In the giving of the Torah, why doesn't God give instructions for making penicilin and other great health advice? Why aren't women's rights and concerns addressed in the Torah? Why doesn't the God of the Torah show compassion for animals rather than having them sacrificed in the Temple or drowned in the flood? I suppose I'd reconsider if archaeologists some day find evidence of a drowned ancient Egyptian army under the Sea of Reeds, but I would still question why God could intervene with ancient Egypt but cannot smite down Hamas without heavy civilian casualties. But here's the thing--like Phillip K. Dick, I don't think the world we inhabit is real. We're in a story or simulation. And I think Judaism plays some role here in this story or multiplayer simulation game, or whatever this is--otherwise, why does the world hate us so much? We're not that significant. Israel and the Palestinian territories are very small. The Jew hatred I've seen rising the last few years is difficult to understand. I am sympathetic to Palestinians in Gaza--but Israel has a right to exist. The events of October 7 are absolutely horrible and must be condemned (why the silence from the pro-Palestinian crowd?) I say silence, but I've seen "human rights" protesters celebrating the attack and the continued launching of rockets into Israel. To be truly pro-Palestinian is to call for Hamas to surrender. They could have surrendered October 8th or thereafter and saved tens of thousands of their own people. Instead, they've made themselves a deadly cancer which must be painfully removed from the Palestinian body politic. Similarly, Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir must be voted out (or overthrown in a coup). The way forward is peace with the Palestinians--a two-state peace without Hamas and without the Israeli/settler right wing. But the fact that practically the whole world is aligned against us, combined with the completely absurd elections of Trump and Netanyahu makes me think we're in a story. A not very good one. I used to think that Houellebecq is the author of this awful story. But perhaps it could be Arnon Grunberg instead...later I'll write on my use of Judaism to understand the glitches in the matrix.

Matt Haig's Midnight Library and Khaled Hosseini's Thousand Splendid Suns

In February, my 10th grade class was about 2/3 of the way through Kaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, (in the scene just before Amir finds Sohrab as a prisoner of Assef), when all of a sudden two assistant principals walk into the class telling me that Kite Runner has been banned by the district and that I needed to gather all copies of it and pivot to teaching something else. Many of the students were angered by this, as they had, by this point, invested in the story and would like to see some sort of happy resolution for Sohrab and Amir. Since then I have wondered what to teach in its place. My girlfriend in Western Australia has a copy of Hosseini's Thousand Splendid Suns, which has not yet been banned in any district in Texas. In Kite Runner, I loved how well he described Afghanistan of the 1970s before the years of warfare and Taliban turned the country into hell on earth. I thought if Thousand Splendid Suns turned out to be a teachable story, I could reuse my lesson on Afghan history, geography and ethnography, so I read it. It was superbly written, but I find it less teachable. The female characters Maryam and Laila don't exercise a lot of agency until late in the book when Laila braved lashings and beatings to visit her daughter in the orphanage, and when they finally stood up to Rasheed. Maryam becomes the very model of bravery and heroism, but this is so late in the book and a less teachable arc than Amir's betrayals and redemption narrative. My girlfriend also had a copy of Matt Haig's Midnight Library which I read with interest. The main character had, like myself, studied philosophy as an undergraduate. It was sophomoric in the sense that of all the people she would have studied, she would be so fixated on Thoreau, who most people encounter in high school rather than in college courses. Why not Hegel, Kant or Wittgenstein? But sophomoric might just be perfect for my sophomores. This book is highly teachable and accessible to a high school audience. It shows (sometimes in a heavy-handed fashion) that choices have consequences and that life is full of endless possibilities, no matter how stuck you may feel. So I am filling out the requisite paperwork to teach this one and hope the answer will be "yes." It does have a few cuss words and a few non-explicit references to sex, so the puritans trying to run Texas schools (and those district curricular decision makers who fear the puritans might fire them) might say no.