The Here and Now [Paperback]

Robert Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2, 1997

While watching his career and marriage disintegrate, Samuel Karnish meets a young Hasidic couple from Brooklyn and embarks on an unlikely friendship with them, a relationship that leaves him morally confused and doubting his own faith. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A disaffected New Yorker finds his life changed by a chance encounter with an Orthodox Jewish couple.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Samuel Karnish, a science editor for a New York newsmagazine, needs a focus. His marriage has failed, his current relationship has soured, and his job is suffering the onset of devolution. On a plane to Houston to attend a friend's third wedding, Karnish meets Aaron and Magda Brenner, who are Hasidic Jews. The Brenners befriend Karnish, who is half-Jewish, and an awkward friendship ensues. Angst-filled Karnish is seeking a niche of his own. The Brenners have ritual and a traditional religious outlook, and are part of their Hasidic enclave in Brooklyn. Childless in a community where fecundity is greatly valued, the Brenners are going to Houston to seek fertility help for Aaron. Magda eventually becomes involved with Karnish in an unlikely set of circumstances. Although Cohen's (The Organ Builder, LJ 6/15/88) story is sadly lacking in verisimilitude, he does examine believers and nonbelievers and their respective lifestyles and what happens when they intermingle in an exuberant, often comic way. For larger public libraries.
Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (January 2, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684831414
• ISBN-13: 978-0684831411
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,708,011 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Cohen is the author of three previous novels, The Organ Builder, The Here and Now, and Inspired Sleep, and a collection of short stories. Winner of a Lila Atcheston Wallace -Reader's Digest Writers Award, the Ribalow Prize, The Pushcart Prize, and a Whiting Award, he has published short fiction in a variety of publications -- including Harpers, GQ, The Paris Review and Ploughshares. He has taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Harvard University, and Middlebury College. He lives in Vermont.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book, beautifully written, February 8, 1998

By 

John Luiz([e-mail] (Norwood MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Here and Now (Paperback)

Cohen is the type of author whose sentences you'll read and reread as you're going along -- they're so beautifully crafted. A wonderful story of a feckless young man trying to find some direction and meaning in his life. As soon as I finished it, I rushed out to get The Organ Builder, Cohen's first novel. (It's out of print, but I found it in a library.) It too was a good read, but I liked The Here and Now better. The Hasidic couple in the Here and Now is wonderful -- the opinionated husband who can't understand the protagonist's lack of direction, and his beautiful, much younger wife, whom the main character falls in love with. To anyone else who reads it, I'd love to discuss your interpretation of the ending.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marvelous must read, May 20, 2004

By 

John Luiz (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Here and Now (Paperback)

I wrote an earlier review under my old e-mail address, but I wanted to update it. I have read this novel about four times and love it more every time I read it. Sam Karnish is a copyeditor for a New Yorker-like magazine and his life is adrift. He has aspirations to being a writer, but no real determination to do the work and make the commitment it would require. On a flight to a friend's wedding, he meets a Hasidic couple -- Aaron and Magda. He immediately develops a crush on Magda, and her husband also becomes an important figure in Sam's life, prodding and challenging him on why he can't commit to anything. Aaron is committed to his religion and all the traditions and rituals Sam finds so extreme. Aaron is an irrepressible force -- a pot-smoking, partying accountant who decided to become a Hasid. Beautiful Magda is a rebbe's daughter who's never experienced much of the world outside of her Hasidic community. Aaron and Magda have a secret agenda for getting close to Sam. They both want to have a child but Aaron can't impregnate his wife. Although he never comes out and asks Sam, he is complicit in the closeness that suddenly develops between Sam and Magda. Their interaction changes each of their lives unexpectedly and dramatically. For me, this novel is like a great painting I can look at over and over again and find new things to relish. It succeeeds, in my view, on almost every level. The sentences are amazing. Robert Cohen writes the most intricate, poignant sentences I've ever read. The story line keeps you reading to uncover the new twists and folds. The ruminations on almost every topic imaginable -- what it means to live a religious life, to commit yourself to a partner, to lead a professional and personal life that is fufilling to yourself and has a larger meaning in the world -- are brilliant. This is also a very funny book. Scenes of Sam playing on a Central Park softball team, later fainting at a bris, and then jumping out of a bathroom window into a rose bush when he's caught having a tryst with Magda -- are laugh out loud funny while still being deeply moving. Read this book and tell all your friends about it! You'll enjoy it, and they'll be grateful.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Chosen People, August 3, 2005

By 

John Petralia (Loveladies, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Here and Now (Paperback)

Unlike abstract paintings where you can see the whole picture, an abstract novel such as The Here and Now is delivered in pieces. Unless and until you can put all the fragments together, the novel comes off as a series of unrelated vignettes. Some are serious. Most are humorous. All are relevant. Take, for example, the softball scene. It's not until much later in the book that what happens at the softball game contributes to the understanding that the reason Sam is often "out of position" is because he allows others to make choices for him. During the game, the team manager chooses to put Sam, a natural third baseman, in the outfield where he is a fish out of water. It is his co-worker, Robbie, who chooses the subject for Sam's job-saving magazine article. Sam's girl friend chooses their days together. Aaron chooses Sam to take Magda to a bris. Magda chooses Sam for a sexual encounter. The subway train "chooses" to take him to Crown Heights instead of his girlfriend's apartment. But at the Bris, it is Sam who chooses to watch the sacred procedure. With Magda, instead of sex, Sam chooses to have a Mikva. While in the hospital, it is Sam who chooses to read the teachings of the Rebbe. And, in the last chapter, Sam chooses to go to Israel, to the Holy Land. Priorities. Sam has finally found his priorities. The epiphany came at the bris. It was there that he chose what was important to him and what was not, to get in the game, to take a more active stance, to hasten That Day by dint of virtue and merit, to do it....here and now.