Fic­tion

Hope: A Tragedy

  • Review
By – March 21, 2012

The title of Shalom Auslander’s new nov­el is no joke. The fate of its hap­less pro­tag­o­nist, Solomon Kugel, makes a strong case for the fol­ly of opti­mism, the decep­tions of life, and the com­fort of death.

Kugel often thinks about dying. When we first meet him he is dream­ing of what it would be like to suf­fo­cate to death in a house fire. He col­lects the dying words of the famous and infa­mous, and con­sid­ers sar­don­ic epi­taphs for his own grave. To Kugel, life large­ly offers false­ness, fear, and dis­ap­point­ment. Even his beloved three-year-old son sees the appeal of death. I’d rather be dead than lost,” says the boy, because if I’m dead I won’t know it.”

An octo­ge­nar­i­an Anne Frank — hav­ing sur­vived Bergen Belsen after all — turns up in the attic of the house the Kugels have just bought. Nobody wants a live Anne Frank,” her pub­lish­er told her when she made her way to Ams­ter­dam after the war. They want a mar­tyr.” To have lived is her curse. Mean­while Kugel’s moth­er finds a sort of refuge in the Holo­caust. She cloaks her life’s bit­ter­ness in an entire­ly fab­ri­cat­ed vic­tim­hood as a con­cen­tra­tion camp sur­vivor, notwith­stand­ing the fact that she was born in Brook­lyn in 1945.

The tute­lary deity pre­sid­ing over this bar­ren world, Kugel’s ther­a­pist Pro­fes­sor Jove, preach­es that opti­mism is the root of all unhap­pi­ness. By his lights, believ­ing that things can get bet­ter leads only to dis­ap­point­ment. Kugel’s fail­ing is there­fore that he takes pity on those around him, becom­ing com­plic­it in his mother’s delu­sions and in Anne Frank’s dream to write a block­buster nov­el. He tries to shield his inno­cent son from the harsh­ness of the world. In this alter­nate uni­verse, such car­di­nal sins must be pun­ished with Euripi­dean inevitabil­i­ty.

Shalom Aus­lan­der writes with phe­nom­e­nal craft. A mas­ter­ly lit­er­ary intel­li­gence under­lies his breezy lan­guage; his sen­tences burst with sly allu­sions to writ­ers from Tadeusz Borows­ki to Samuel Beck­ett. He also makes can­ny use of details. A cat with the cheer­ful name Sun­shine is killed and eat­en. Kugel’s moth­er places small writ­ten notes on the west­ern wall of Anne Frank’s attic room, her own pri­vate Kotel. Aus­lan­der orches­trates the sto­ry­telling in pre­cise rhythms through­out, not least in his many punch­lines.

True to its name, Hope: A Tragedy depicts a sad, dis­mal world where the desire for atone­ment can nev­er be achieved; where only the fool­ish have hope, and they pay the con­se­quences. A read­er can only wish that it is not the world in which Shalom Aus­lan­der actu­al­ly lives.

Shalom Aus­lan­der’s Attic Calls

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