Today: November 11th 2010 (2)

Reality,

To best express my (I’m sensing our) frustration, I’ve linked the relevant book review from The New York Times.

Right Here!: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/books/review/JCohen-t.html

How over over a century’s worth of reportage the New York Times never came across the concept of a conflict of interest seems implausibly implausible.  Aside from the glaring similarities of their novels and a presumable disparity between the respective financial/critical reactions, Joshua Cohen-and I’ve confirmed this with more than reputable sources (a majority of the voices controlling my mind and body)-is an ostentatious, bloated whale penis.  I hate The New York Times Book Review to begin with.  It’s either decidedly polarized to the magnetic north of glowing praise or the magnetic south of excoriation and the only other realm it knows how to inhabit is the indistinct realm of vagaries.  A grade would simplify matters.

In the case of this review, I learn less about the quality of the book and more about Joshua Cohen’s esoteric and irrelevant knowledge of Hebrew scripture.  His glaring subconscious need to prove his intellectual and writerly superiority to Levin pervades every printed word like a kind of critical ringworm.  The main problem appears to stem from the New York Times’ belief that these two are peers.

To best express how the two are not peers, I’ve linked a relevant book review from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/home/heller-something.html

Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller=peers.

Joshua Cohen and Adam Levin=not peers.

Both did write 800+ page books set in alternate, future universes that deal directly with Jewish identity and employ mammoth casts of characters along with metafictional devices, books that took identical stretches of time to write (9 years), books that will demand comparison for as long as it takes for people to forget that Witz ever existed.  Both, also, have the most stock exurban Jew names ever, but one of them cares entirely too much about what you think of him, while the other cares entirely too much about entertaining and challenging you with his book.

Guess which is which?

O’s and X’s,

Carmen

P.S. If you don’t believe me, feel free to check out the 366 page long Google preview of Joshua Cohen’s Witz.