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sherbertwells's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
“Ja, dermaßen war sein Herz an Unglück gewöhnt, daß er immer noch erschrak, selbst nach einer langen Vorbereitung auf das Glück. Was kann einem Mann wie mir, dachte er, überraschend Fröhliches widerfahren? Alles Plötzliche ist böse, und das Gute schleicht langsam” (115)
The Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (dtv) cover of Joseph Roth’s Hiob is truly haunting. In a black-and white photo from Edwin Levick, a crowd catches a glimpse of New York City through the windows of a ship’s promenade deck. The opaque sea of overcoats and bowler hats suggests the early 20th century, as does the lanternlike skyline emerging from the mist on the other side of the glass. But the intricate facades of the city offer no cause for celebration; for the most part, the passengers are looking down.
What do these strangers—likely immigrants, based on the rest of Levick’s portfolio—expect from the Land of Opportunity? Are they hopeful? Afraid? Resigned? Any of these emotions would be suitable to Hiob, a lonely retelling of the eponymous Book.
The last novel I read, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, also adapted a tale from the Old Testament to comment on turn-of-the-century America. Besides the choice of source material (Genesis and Job are both well-known stories with opposite trajectories), there are two major differences between the works.
First of all, Hiob looks at the American dream from an outsider’s perspective. In 1930, three years before the rise of Nazi Germany forced him to flee to Paris, Joseph Roth was one of the most famous writers on the German literary scene. The story of Mendel Singer, an Orthodox teacher who moves with his family to America, appeals to the curiosity of Roth’s German-speaking audience. Singer’s linguistic and spiritual alienation is particularly noticeable as his son Schemarjah (now Sam) introduces him to America in proto-Denglish:
“Er wußte bereits, daß old chap* auf amerikanisch Vater hieß und old fool Mutter, oder umgekehrt...Er wußte, daß Sam ein American boy war, daß man good bye sagte, how do you do und please, wenn man ein feiner Mann war, daß ein Kaufmann von der Grand Street Respekt verlangen konnte und manchmal am River wohnen durfte, an jenem River, nach dem es auch Schemarjah gelüstete. Man hatte ihm gesagt, daß Amerika God’s own country hieß, daß es ein Land Gottes war, wie einmal Palästina, und New York eigentlich »the wonder city«, die Stadt der Wunder, wie einmal Jerusalem. Das Beten dagegen nannte man »service« und die Wohltätigkeit ebenso” (107)
The second difference between Hiob and East of Eden is that the former is good.
Unlike in Steinbeck’s novel, suffering in Hiob is not a product of human wickedness. Mendel is pious but passive. His wife Deborah is a practical woman who struggles to love her children. His sons Jonas and Schemarjah/Sam pursue assimilation into the Russian military and New York society with earnest effort, and his daughter Mirjam, who in another story might be villainized for her dalliances with cossack soldiers, displays a remarkable emotional sensitivity. His youngest son Menuchim, regarded as a hindrance due to his dual afflictions of epilepsy and childhood, eventually gets the opportunity to speak his mind. Even the Russians in Zuchnow, the Singers’ hometown, are more grumpy and bureaucratic than malicious, and the American characters challenge the stereotype of New York rudeness.
The absence of obvious villains may stem from the philosophical difference between Jewish and Christian religious frameworks or Roth’s own left-leaning sentiments, but the suffering undergone by the Singers is the same. Like the crowd on the dtv cover, Mendel is conquered by melancholy in God’s Own Country. The pursuits of his children—military service, entrepreneurial success, and hedonism—are not fundamentally satisfying, nor are ideological commitments like patriotism or piety. Without a spiritual certainty at its center, Hiob feels haunted. If one substitutes the American skyscraper for the European Schloss, it is almost gothic.
“Die Lampe brennt gelblich, ihr Licht ist fett, wie ihr Geruch. Sie kӓmpft gegen den dunklen Tag, der schwӓchlich und fahl ist, aber mӓchtig genug, um mit seinem hellen Grau das ganze Zimmer zu bestreichen. An dieses Licht erinnert sich Mendel Singer genau. Er hat diese Szene getrӓumt. Er weiß auch, was jetzt folgen wird. Alles weiß Mendel schon, als lӓge es lӓngst zurück und als hӓtte sich der Schmerz schon vor Jahren in eine Trauer verwandelt” (130)
Roth doesn’t need the melodramatic and gory propaganda of explicitly political works like East of Eden or Upton Sinclair’s Jungle to get his point across. With longing, introspective prose, he probes the tumors in the American Dream and produces a red, quivering mass that resembles a human heart.
More than Sinclair or Steinbeck ever could, he makes me fear America.
Across the Atlantic ocean, at the comfortable remove of an American exchange student, I am drawn once again to the crowd gathered along the promenade deck of Hiob’s cover. My mind lingers on their obscured faces, their lumpy hats and the perforated edifices in the distance. I cannot pick out Mendel Singer from that crowd. He is too vast to pack into a suitcase, to stow away in the hold of a ship or let reign in a New York apartment.
I am incredibly grateful, then, that Roth has found 200 pages worthy of holding it.
*This is likely a misunderstanding; “old chap” is a Britishism, while “old man” would be an appropriate American slang term for “father.”
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism, Death, Forced institutionalization, and War
Minor: Antisemitism