“I look at my whole life and I see the awful, terrible
things and turn into something funny”, says the aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin
(played by Robert De Niro) in Scorsese’s brilliant satirical black comedy “The
King of Comedy” (1982). Israeli author David Grossman’s protagonist Dovaleh Greenstein
in his unsettling novel A Horse Walks into a Bar definitely seems to cook-up
humor and laugh-inducing antics by honing his own personal suffering. Unlike the
unhinged Pupkin, Dovaleh has got himself a stage and decent number of
audiences, who are all eager to choke-up on laughs. And, the 57 year old
comedian doesn’t disappoint them at least for the first few minutes. He
commences his patter by heaping amusing insults about the Israeli coastal town
Netanya in which he is performing (inside a small basement club). He mocks some
of the patrons sitting around the club, in a brash and aggressive manner,
although the audience keeps laughing.
Dovaleh G, with a lean frame and clownish tics, does appear
to be a testing – not that likeable – individual. He spins jokes out of his
marriage, alimony, prostrate cancer, and even on his parents’ characteristics. So
far the crowd erupts as he works them with self-deprecating comments and morbid
jokes. But gradually, Dovaleh begins reiterating a long-forgotten, nightmarish
personal story which instills more of the awful, terrible things and less of the
funny elements. The audience begins to squirm in their seats, reflecting on the
prospect of leaving the club. Dovaleh’s story is one of broken friendships,
complicity, unbearable loss and prolonged abuse. There’s something entrancing
in the way the stand-up comedian powers through the personal account that we
begin to feel his inner pain. In the end, only few members stay to glean the
man’s tale. And those who feel cheated or disappointed by this emotional tour
de force may question like the annoyed audience member in the novel: “Where are
the jokes? What’s going on here? What is this crap?”
The entire novel – occupied largely by Dovaleh’s grand, raw
monologue – is written from the perspective of Avishai Lazar, a retired
district judge and once a childhood friend of Dovaleh. Known for his precise
judgments, Lazar is earnestly requested by Dovaleh (two weeks before the
schedule) to come and watch his show (“I want you to see me…and tell me what
you saw”, says the comedian to the judge). Lazar is initially reluctant to
Dovaleh’s idea whose fleeting friendship with him ended four decades before. But
after a lengthy persuasive conversation and due to the fact that Lazar is so
lonely (his beloved wife Tamara has passed away three years before) he agrees
to come to the show. Since Avishai Lazar serves us our vantage point, we inherit
his doubts and skepticism and initially see the comedian’s macho swagger &
sexist innuendos with a mark of irritation. The other unforeseen guest in the
club is a little, miserable woman who also have a shared history, albeit an old
chapter, with Dovaleh.
 |
| Mr. David Grossman |
A Horse Walks into a Bar is the Israeli author’s 11th
novel (and my first novel of Grossman) which happens to have won this year’s
Man Booker International Prize (Grossman shares the award & $84,000 prize
with translator Jessica Cohen). David Grossman is one of the prominent Israeli
peace advocate who had repeatedly condemned daily brutalities of the
Palestinian occupation. A Horse Walks into a Bar starts off as a distractingly
funny story and ends up being a courageous parable on the inhumanity and complicity
of those who cower in front of injustice. Dovaleh’s backstory, interspersed with
tragic feelings of Lazar, depicts how we process loss or grief and the bunch of
unanswerable questions those emotions provokes. Beneath each wisecracking comments,
Grossman makes us feel the wretched miseries of his protagonist. The author’s
writing of Dovaleh’s relentless banter elegantly shifts between tone and mood. There’s
an unusual power in the way the protagonist lays bare the wounds of his
despairing heart without ever drenching it with bouts of sentimentality.
A Horse Walks into a Bar (194 pages) is a truly remarkable
and ambitious novel which distinctly studies the profound effects of grief,
isolation, and abuse. Marked with undercurrent of Arab-Israeli politics, this
discomfiting ride into the stand-up comic’s troubled soul is a truly searing read.
David Grossman with Nicole Krauss
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