Anyone who’s experienced will tell you the same: when a marriage fails, always, always there is fault.
This is a very appropriate quote to take out of context from its specific story. While definitely applicable in its specificity to that narrative, it could just as easily be dropped into a number of other tales. Marriages are numerous throughout the collection and none of them are what one would term particularly happy. The author follows Tolstoy’s conviction that unhappy families are not alike as each of the unhappy marriages here seem destined for failure for different reasons that hold those responsible accountable for different faults.
Worth every penny and every shame, she thinks, for one slow spin, hair on her head and mirror in her hand, leaning back, beautiful.
The driving force behind the collection as a whole is irony. Each of the stories can be termed ironic in one way or another. Some are more so than others while a few trod down a darker path to irony than their more tragicomic counterparts. What should be noted is that the author is not generally trucking in that kind of irony that delivers a twisting counterpunch at the end. The stories are not geared toward the pulling of the rug out from under all that has led to the ending. One exception to this rule is the ending of “The Wig” which does not deliver a twist upending necessarily, but does yank the curtain down on its little domestic drama with a big more raw energy and shocking revelation than the other stories.
“I’m Jewish.”
Luger asserts this quote three times over the course of his story and well he should: it is about a man who suddenly realizes he has become inhabited by the soul of a dead Jewish man. So he has reason to announce his Jewishness despite the fact that he knows his words will not be taken seriously. The phrase will be repeated a little later in the story “Reb Kringle” by a young boy on a mall Santa’s lap after Santa responds to his gift request by asking him what a young Christian boy would want with a menorah. What is of interest is that the assertion which is made just twice in this collection is voiced by a Christian man and a young Jewish boy assumed to be Christian. Interesting because it could be said by every major character in the stories; this is a collection of stories by a Jewish writer about Jewish people. That these two characters who from different perspectives can be viewed as both Jewish and not Jewish simultaneously are the only two making the assertion underscores that the collection is not really so much about the Jewish experience per se as it an exploration of what that phrase actually means. These are characters attempting to discover what it is to be Jewish in the modern world.
“We cannot live in fear. Of course, you’re terrified, it’s terror after all. Five times more likely to be run over. Ten times more likely to die in a car. But you still cross the street don’t you?”
The final story in the collection situates what it means to be Jewish in the modern world in a concrete perspective when it comes to being Jewish in Israel. The story begins in a café with the peacefulness suddenly interrupted by three blasts announcing terror has arrived again. The story then pursues down a path in which the narrator receives an education on how to deal with such things in Israel: never blink, don’t take sides, live like a ghost, don’t be a hero. Being Jewish in the modern world means the same thing as it ever did: enduring.
