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Party Tonight for the Next (or Last?) Great Jewish Novel

By Tablet columnist Joshua Cohen

by
Ari M. Brostoff
April 15, 2010
(Observer.com)
(Observer.com)

If you’re in New York City, novelist—and Tablet Magazine literary critic—Joshua Cohen will be at BookCourt in Brooklyn tonight, celebrating the release of Witz, his 817-page comic novel about The Last Jew on Earth, at a party hosted by Tablet Magazine editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse. To get a sense of what we’re dealing with here, check out this recent profile of Cohen in the New York Observer. “For all its gags,” the Observer says, “[Witz] was conceived with a singular aesthetic mission: to put an end to the novel of Jewish kitsch, Holocausts with happy endings. ‘The targets might be Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, Shalom Auslander,’ Mr. Cohen told me. ‘When I started this book, I wanted to sleep with their wives. By the time I finished, I wanted to sleep with their mothers.’ ”

A Nice Jewish Boy’s Naughty Big Novel [NY Observer]

Ari M. Brostoff is Culture Editor at Jewish Currents.