Conversion Of The Jews by Philip Roth, 1958
The magic trick:
Treating an issue with reverence and mockery at the same time
This isn’t the first time I’ve made a comparison to a story on SSMT to the films of the Coen Brothers. Perhaps I have a limited, unoriginal mind. Perhaps I need to expand my knowledge of movies so I can expand my references. Or perhaps there is something to this repetition. The Coen Brothers are very literary. The best short stories often are very cinematic.
Reading a Philip Roth classic, “The Conversion Of The Jews,” I was reminded not only very strongly of the Coens gem A Serious Man but of a central tone that animates so many of their movies. Both the story and the Coens revel in the ability to turn the surreal into the hilarious, the hilarious into the absurd, the absurd into existential.
Specifically in “Conversion,” young Ozzie fights with his teacher and runs onto the school’s roof in protest. The plot’s momentum and the way it’s narrated make the situation comical almost to the point of zany. We should mention, though, the cause of the fight. The young student is passionately arguing about immaculate conception and what else it would mean about God if true.
So yes, it’s a very funny story but it’s also taking the reader deeper into the depths of universal mysteries than most deathly serious sermons. Very Coens in that way, right?
And that’s quite a trick on Roth’s part.
The selection:
“That’s what Binder says: ‘The only way a woman can have a baby is to have intercourse with a man.’”
“He said that, Ozz?” For a moment it appeared that Itzie had put the theological question aside. “He said that, intercourse?” A little curled smile shaped itself in the lower half of Itzie’s face like a pink mustache. “What you guys do, Ozz, you laugh or something?”
“I raised my hand.”
“Yeah? Whatja say?”
“That’s when I asked the question.”
Itzie’s face lit up. “Whatja ask about—intercourse?”
“No, I asked the question about God, how if He could create the heaven and earth in six days, and make all the animals and the fish and the light in six days—the light especially, that’s what always gets me, that He could make the light. Making fish and animals, that’s pretty good—“
“That’s damn good.” Itzie’s appreciation was honest but unimaginative: it was as though God just pitched a one-hitter.
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