Customer Reviews

The Task of This Translator

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Small things often bother us more than they should, and big things sometimes bother us less than they should. I think that's the central theme of Hasak-Lowy's collection. It's most obvious in "The End of Larry's Wallet" where losing a wallet upsets a man so deeply that he lacks concern about his daughter's illness and an atomic war that kills millions.(Ecclesiastes has the same theme, but Hasak-Lowy is funnier).

The central character in the stories is essentially the same person, although he's given different names. He's clever but ineffective, financially unsuccessful but not poverty-stricken, and is unlucky in love but not virginal. The women in his life are out of James Thurber and so practical and savvy as to be slightly threatening. The men in his life are more aggressive or materialistic than he is. The blackness of the humor and the penetration of the insights have to be read to be believed.

One mystery to me is where has this guy been. Only one of the stories has been previously published (in the Iowa Review). I understand that there was a rave review in the New York Times but I missed it. I was lucky enough to pick this up in a bookstore at Kennedy airport, otherwise I might have missed this wonderful writer. I`ll be careful not to again.

I cannot say that the stories are all brilliant but they are all very creative and entertaining. The author refuses to put down any thought without examining it from many angles and perspectives. One of the stories has an American tourist get into a fight with an Israeli cashier at Yad Va Shem. Does the austerity of the surroundings excuse the staleness of the muffins being sold at the museum? Does the fact that English is an "international language" excuse the fact that an American Jew in Israel will address people in English fully expecting them to understand... The conflict in the situation produces a great read.

Read the Eder review in the NYTimes, and bought this book. Although Hasak-Lowy's metafictive ambitions occasionally distract from a few of the stories (the India/Pakistan nuclear war idea achieved its initial shock value but little else), this writer uses language in an astounding way, such as the repetetive use of a euphemism for Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial or the absurd way a naive, lonely, geeky, intellectual student speaks of his willing victimization by a low-life who befriends him. And most of his stories allow authenticity to blossom from the fertile artifice.

You make an investment. At first the returns are astonishing, the experience is exhilarating, but when it's all over you leave empty-handed. At the end, you realize you've been had. And so with this book. The stories draw you in with their fancy verbal footwork, their Rube-Goldberg-Invention style of construction, and their surreal, bizarre situations. For a while, the ride is great fun--and thus the four stars. But at the end, when you see through all the stylistic smoke and mirrors, almost nothing of spiritual, intellectual, or emotional substance remains.

This is one of the best collections of short stories that I've read in years, if not in my entire life. Todd Hasak-Lowy, in these seven stories, displays remarkable range - both in theme and in style. His writing is fast-paced and vibrant, and one can easily get lost in the tiny and often melancholy worlds that his characters inhabit. He has a remarkable eye for detail - his prose often borders on cinematic (and often mimics the cinematic, as in the fight scene in the title story) - and a great sense of irony not often found in authors of short fiction. Hasak-Lowy is also a very funny author: I laughed out loud so many times reading this collection that I lost count.

This collection contains the following stories:

"On the Grounds of the Complex Commemoration the Nazis' Treatment of the Jews" - An out-of-work Israeli journalist, making ends meet in the coffee shop at Yad Vashem, gets into a disagreement with an American businessman over a stale pastry.

"Will Power, Inc." - A graduate student in cultural anthropology writes an artical for a local weekly newspaper on a new company of "diet-enforcers" that caters to the wealthy and obese. Had I not known that this was Hasak-Lowy's writing, I would have sworn it had been written by David Foster Wallace.

"The End of Larry's Wallet" - Three things happen: 1) A guy named Larry, recently divorced and about to lose custody of his daughter, loses his wallet. 2) India and Pakistan trade nuclear weapons, resulting in the death of millions of people on the Indian subcontinent. 3) Dr. Hasak-Lowy gets into a debate, hosted by TEd Koppel, with the leader of an Indian-American anti-defamation group about his depiction of Indians and Pakistanis in his short story "The End of Larry's Wallet."

"The Interview" - A recent graduate of the Kellogg business school at Northwestern interviews for a position in the marketing department of an office-supply design company. Very funny piece.

"The Task of this Translator" - In my mind, the best piece in the book. A recent college graduate in need of funds agrees to be a personal translator for a man from a country whose language he does not speak.

"Raider Nation" - A graduate student studying Marxist literary theory makes friends with a low-life who works at the same bank as he.

"How Keith's Dad Died" - The story of the last three months of a man's life.

This collection is highly recommended to anyone who would enjoy a great new author.

Hasak-Lowy's debut collection is most noteworthy for its linguistic precision; the author's ear for language is extraordinary, particularly in the very first story in the collection, "On the Grounds of the Complex Commemorating the Nazis' Treament of the Jews." The sometimes cumbersome description of the "complex commemorating the Nazis' treatment of the Jews" alludes both to the Israeli protagonist's difficulties in translating Hebrew into English and the difficulty of translating the Holocaust itself into a language that is meaningful. Yet these stories succeed not just on a technical level; they have emotional resonance as well. They movingly explore the failure of language to cross the divide that separates us from other people. They also explore how our personal travails can take precedence over historical events and how large-scale tragedies are at some level incomprehensible. Most noteworthy in this regard is "The End of Larry's Wallet," where the protagonist's loss of his wallet takes precedence over a nuclear event between India and Pakistan and even, in some sense, over his daughter's serious medical condition.

Don't miss "Raider Nation," which is a hilarious yet poignant tale of a highly educated and introspective narrator's attempts to make a connection across racial and class divides (at least partly out of what might be called liberal guilt but also out of a genuine loneliness and isolation).

I've read the stories in this book, on average, I think, around three times each. I feel like I've associated distinct feelings with each story, due to each of them being consistently interesting and funny and emotional, in my view, to a degree that I can think of one part of one story and feel "comfortable" and interested in the world of the story, while away from the book, for an amount of time. I feel really interested in another story-collection by Todd Hasak-Lowy. I liked his novel also.

If you're here, you've probably seen the NYTimes review of 7/27. It's a rave and I'll leave it to Eder to wax poetic about THL's themes, but what I want to emphasize is the language -- it is amazing. Nothing I could say would convince you, read for yourself the Amazon-provided pages and you'll see. It is witty and clever and driving.

You won't be sorry.

I was very entertained by the stories. I do not often read short stories, but they are perfect length to read before going to bed.