Customer Reviews

Job: The Story of a Simple Man

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mendel Singer parallels the biblical Job. Roth's characters are warm and human. The best of all the fictional treatments of the Job story. I particularly appreciated his treatment of the most difficult part of the Book of Job, his final restoration.

An extraordinarily moving story with the biblical Job at its heart - a man driven `to curse God' and ready to die, including his friends who come as comforters - but written in such a way as to capture the heart of the story and the imagination of the reader and, by concluding at the very point where you want it to go on, leaving you to complete the experience for yourself.

It is so good to see that people haven't changed in almost 100 years. What moved people then, still moves us today. Life has come full circle. It is among the wisest books about human nature and life's bare essentials.

Joseph Roth uses the style of Yiddish story telling to retell the ancient story of Job. This is a beautiful and poignant story in which all the characters are fully drawn and recognizable from our own lives. Since reading this book, I've gone on to read all Roth's works of fiction. I wish we had writers of his quality today.

A book so beautifully wrought, so poetically driven,
so simple in its profound telling of sadness, despair and
redemption. Read this and be rewarded with the
memory of Mendel which, hopefully, will accompany
you all your years

Alert: Spoilers are suggested, but not defined!

I rejoice! I shout with happiness. I have found an adult novel with a glorious ending! Joseph Roth took a 180 turn from "The Holy Drinker," a despairing and depressing book, the first Roth I read several months ago (and reviewed), with this, a work of wonder, "Job: The Story of a Simple Man."

Getting to the wonder, the joy, the miracle was an uneasy slug through one bad circumstance after the other, until about mid-way through the novel. What typically encapsulates man is his inability to act in a given circumstance, usually by birth. As in life, fictional characters are born, slug through life, and die--all in one setting, as if there is no world beyond.

What sets "Job" apart and made this reader literally sit up and take notice was the family's move to America. What courage! What imagination to consider a world beyond a tiny Russian village! How unimaginable within context of fiction. I thought, Roth as creator is planning big here. If Mendel Singer is Job and suffers major losses as Job, how is he going to America? To what end?

Let me begin at the beginning. Mendel has a wife, Deborah. They have had three children, all pretty much grown when little Menuchim is born. If the word "freak" weren't probably politically incorrect, I would use it to describe the deformed, sickly, pitiful child. However, both Deborah and Mendel love him. When one of their sons immigrates to America to avoid being drafted into the Russian army (and sure death), he succeeds and sends for his family. Mendel makes arrangements for Menuchim to stay behind.

So, how does Mendel's story compare with Job's. One son goes into the army--lost. One son goes to America--lost. His daughter sleeps with Cossacks--lost. The youngest is deformed--lost. However, Deborah takes the child to a regional rabbi who pronounces a curious prophecy over Menuchim.

In America--and this is the last of the story I will relate--the daughter goes insane, one son is killed, one son is missing, and one son's fate is unknown. Deborah literally drops dead. Mendel is so upset with God that he puts away his bag of prayer materials and swears off God. His friends come and have a biblical discussion akin to the Job story in the Bible.

I was never convinced that Mendel suffered any more than any other human being. Oh sure, there are some humans who seem to lead charmed lives, but most of us live lives comprised of both gains and losses. However, Mendel is the subject of this parable, so Mendel I will consider. Although God does not restore all of Mendel's losses as He does for the biblical Job, the miracle He works is not to be missed. It's a mighty miracle which will cause the reader to stop and reflect: Can we explain the ways of God? Roth surely presents the miracle-wielding side of God, as if to say: When God performs a miracle such as this, His ways are clearly revealed, or at the very least, a compassionate side.

... Mendel Singer wouldn't have no luck at all. He is a poor teacher in Russia's Far West, near the Austrian border, in the early 20th century. He has a happy family in its limited way, until the 4th child is born a cripple and handicapped. Harmony breaks. The wife becomes an emotional stranger. (You are stupid, because you teach children. You give them your knowledge and they give you their stupidity! Many thousands of sentences have been written, but you always remember the wrong ones!)
The other children grow up and drift away. First son joins the Czar's army..., what a debacle for good Jewish parents. Second son, to avoid the same fate, deserts to America (using the same snakehead that Roth readers know from Radetzkymarsch and also from False Weight). Daughter loses herself and becomes a loose woman. When she is seen going with a Cossack, her parents know it is time to go to America too, leaving poor crippled Menuchim behind.
But that is only the start of the trouble.

What we have in this moving, endearing, tragic, beautiful real-life fairytale is a combination of a Jewish Ugly Duckling with an American Dream story, all mixed into the biblical original.
It is probably Roth's most Jewish book (I don't know all that many of his writings, yet, actually). I think it is a vast improvement over the Old Testament version of Job.
It was published in 1930, so the Holocaust does not play into the story. Antisemitism is of course an essential part of the historical background (see the Cossack antagonism), but we are more exposed to the Jewish side of the coin: the fear and rejection of all things non-Jewish, be they government officials, army officers, lovers of unruly daughters. When Mendel is at his lowest, the worst that he can think of to punish the evil god for all the misery that he has caused him is: to go to the Italians and eat pork. That will teach him!

Joseph Roth writes prose that is so concise yet impactful and meaningful that he managed in a 200 page novel to create an absolutely beautiful allegory about suffering and redemption. Set in early 20th century Russia and then New York, his Mendel Singer suffers loss after loss but as Roth states at several points "He was pious , God fearing and ordinary, an entirely commonplace Jew." This is a very powerful and moving novel that should not be missed. It will stay with me for a long time.

This novel was written in 1930 and reissued by Archipelago Books last month. Mendel Singer is a pious and ordinary Jewish man who is barely able to provide for his wife and children as a teacher of young children in early 20th century Russia. His life has been one of struggle and misery, compounded by a loveless marriage and the birth of his last child, who is severely delayed and epileptic. His two adult sons are called into military service; Jonas joins the Russian Army willingly, but Shemariah deserts to America, leaving Singer with his wife, their promiscuous daughter and their afflicted son. A rabbi instructs Mrs Singer to never leave the young Menuchim, and predicts that his situation is not a hopeless one, but one that will take many years before he begins to improve.

Years later, as the Singers sink deeper into poverty they are encouraged to emigrate to America by their son, who has found success in New York. Torn between their responsibility to Menuchim, their familiarity with their neighbors, and the possibility of a better life in America, the Singers decide to emigrate. However, new challenges await them, and for Mendel his personal suffering is magnified, as his faith in God is severely tested.

This modernized retelling of the Biblical story of Job was very well done, with sympathetic and realistic characters, and excellent portrayals of the crushing poverty and struggles of pre-revolutionary Russia contrasted with the chaos and stresses of life in New York's Lower East Side, and is highly recommended.

One of the most beautifully written novels of the Twentieth Century. It is a simple story about suffering, love and loss in the life of a Russian Jew. There are moments of quiet and solemn heartbreak. We witness the slow, subtle fragmentation of a man's life, his family and yet all is not lost.

I deeply love German literature and the works of Roth are intelligent and equally moving. His prose is tender, simple and yet there is so much compassion and depth in his composition one is left feeling both glorious and tearful at the end. This is the book to reach for to regain faith in life and one's life path. When you read it and finish it, pass it on to loved ones. The story of Mendel is the story of an everyman in all of us.

Hopefully I will be able to read the original in German one day. The translation is inspiring.