The recent New Yorker fiction issue has a short story by Jonathan Safrar Foer, “Maybe It Was the Distance,” which opens with this line:
“Well, now I’ll have an answer,” Irv said, with a self-satisfied nod that resembled davening or Parkinson’s.
I had to look up “davening”; it refers to “the prayer recitations and Jewish meditation traditions that form part of the observance of Rabbinic Judaism.” (Thanks, Wikipedia!) Wikipedia goes on to note that “Many Jews sway their body back and forth during prayer.”
I thought the rest of the story would include someone with Parkinson’s, but it doesn’t. It does delve into the lives of an extended family, half of which lives in the USA, the other half in Israel. In particular, the story relates some wild shenanigans that two cousins go through over their lifetime, one cousin more daring than the other.
There are lots of shocking scenes, including one that takes place in a Washington, DC, men’s room, where one of the cousins is standing at a urinal and notices that Steven Spielberg is peeing beside him. The cousin glances over at the famous director’s penis and notices he is uncircumcised.
I won’t spoil what happens next; I’ll just say that most of the story is quite remarkable, even at the sentence level.
For example, here’s a snippet of dialog near the story’s beginning. Irv is the grandfather; Jacob is his adult son; Max is Jacob’s eleven-year-old son:
Irv turned back to Jacob. “The world hates Jews. I know you think the prevalence of Jews in culture is some kind of counterargument, but that’s like saying the world loves pandas because crowds come to see them in zoos.”
“I like pandas,” Max said.
“You don’t,” Irv corrected.
“I would be psyched to have one as a pet.”
“It would eat your face.”
“Awesome.”
It’s a fresh and enjoyable read on many levels. To read a recent New Yorker story where a character does have Parkinson’s, click on my earlier post here.
