Jacobson, Howard 1942–

PERSONAL:

Born August 25, 1942, in Manchester, England; son of Max and Anita Jacobson; married Barbara Starr, 1964 (divorced, 1972); married Rosalin Joy Sadler, 1978 (divorced, 2004); married Jenny de Yong, 2005; children: (first marriage) one son. Education: Downing College, Cambridge, B.A., 1964.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Curtis Brown, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP, England.

CAREER:

Critic, educator, television host, and writer. University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, member of faculty, 1965-68; Selwyn College Cambridge, Cambridge, England, supervisor, 1969-72; Wolverhampton Polytechnic, West Midlands, England, senior lecturer in English, 1974-80. Presenter of television series Traveller's Tales, 1991, Seriously Funny, BBC4, 1996-97, and In the Land of Oz.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing, and Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize, both 2000, both for The Mighty Walzer.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

Coming from Behind, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1983, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1984.

Peeping Tom, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1984, Ticknor and Fields (New York, NY), 1985.

Redback, Bantam (London, England), 1986, Viking (New York, NY), 1987.

The Very Model of a Man, Viking (London, England), 1992, Overlook Press (New York, NY), 1994.

No More Mister Nice Guy, Jonathan Cape (London, England), 1998.

The Mighty Walzer, Jonathan Cape (London, England), 1999.

Who's Sorry Now?, Jonathan Cape (London, England), 2002.

The Making of Henry, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Kalooki Nights, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2007.

OTHER

(With Wilbur Sanders) Shakespeare's Magnanimity: Four Tragic Heroes, Their Friends, and Families, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1978.

In the Land of Oz (travel), Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1987.

Roots Schmoots: Journeys among Jews, Viking (London, England), 1993, Overlook Press (New York, NY), 1994.

Seriously Funny: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime, Viking (London, England), 1997.

Contributor of short stories to anthologies, including Best Short Stories 1989, edited by Giles Gordon and David Hughes, Heinemann (London, England), 1989, published as The Best English Short Stories 1989, Norton (New York, NY), 1989. Contributor to Modern Painters, 1988—. Author of weekly column in London Independent, 1998—; contributor of book reviews.

ADAPTATIONS:

Seriously Funny was adapted as a television series.

SIDELIGHTS:

English novelist and broadcaster Howard Jacobson has made a career out of looking squarely at human foibles—his own included. "Comedy begins where tragedy loses its nerve," Jacobson wrote in Contemporary Novelists, and in his novels and books of nonfiction he pursues this technique of meta-tragedy, turning the quotidian into the raw materials of comedy. Liam O'Brien, writing in Contemporary Novelists, asserted that Jacobson's "sharply observed portrayals of academic life and the urban Jewish psyche give his bawdy, scatological books a piquant verisimilitude." O'Brien further commented: "The themes which pervade his novels—ideological duplicity, cultural self-consciousness, sexual ambivalence, and gnawing self-doubt—could make some readers uncomfortable as they recognize themselves within his glass, were it not for the verve and aplomb of the humor with which they are relayed." Writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Glyn Turton found Jacobson's major themes to be "the subverting of received structures, flight from constraint, and craving for instant gratification." According to Turton, Jacobson is a "highly effective wit and jester, both fictively dramatizing and discursively advocating, the therapeutic value of the wisdom of the fools."

Born in Manchester, England, to Jewish parents, Jacobson is several times an outsider in his native England and is thus, as Turton acknowledged, "perfectly" equipped for the task of comic writing. Educated at Cambridge University, where he studied English under the celebrated critic and educator F.R. Leavis, Jacobson began his post-college career teaching in New South Wales, Australia. Back in England in 1969, he continued teaching until 1980, when he left academe to pursue a freelance writing career, penning fiction as well as travel books. He has also enjoyed success as a broadcaster in England.

Jacobson's first novel, Coming from Behind, "derives its comic edge and telling accuracy from the author's experience of the drearier reaches of modern British higher education," according to Turton. Sefton Goldberg dreams of teaching at Cambridge, but in reality his academic career has flat-lined at a lowly polytechnic in the English West Midlands. A man for whom it is easier to land a girl in his bed than a good job, Goldberg bumbles through the pages of Jacobson's debut novel, pinning his hopes on a fellowship at Cambridge. Reviewing the novel in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Charles Champlin concluded that it is "inestimably good reading." Coming from Behind inevitably drew comparisons with Kingsley Amis's send-up of academia, Lucky Jim, as well as the Jewish comic novels of Philip Roth. Michael Leapman, writing in the New York Times Book Review, felt that in this "very funny first novel" Jacobson "felicitously marries the two genres." Dean Flower, commenting on the novel in the Hudson Review, found that Jacobson's "wickedly funny first novel … makes Lucky Jim … seem tame." Turton further pointed out that Coming from Behind establishes a model that much of Jacobson's subsequent fiction has followed: "Underpinned by a concentration upon the misadventures, misalliances, neuroses, and antipathies of a central character (always Jewish and always male), they are otherwise essentially vehicles for totem-busting, cultural jokes, and rumbustious comic episodes." It is also, according to Turton, "arguably Jacobson's best novel."

Peeping Tom, Jacobson's second novel, is based on the premise that a London Jewish intellectual, Barney Fugelman, believes he is or was Thomas Hardy because they share the same birthday, albeit a century apart. Such a belief has been brought out during hypnosis, and now Fugelman indulges in some of Hardy's less-than-healthy preoccupations, including voyeurism. Such proclivities lead the man into numerous marriages and tangled relationships full of confused identities and ribald scenes. Alan Franks, reviewing the novel in the Times Literary Supplement, noted that "Jacobson is incapable of concocting an unbalanced sentence or a short-changing aphorism," and further commented that Peeping Tom "rings with a justifiable temerity." Not all reviewers were so positive about the book, however. Humphrey Carpenter, writing in the London Review of Books, remarked that "Jacobson's hold on the story loosens" because the author tries to accomplish too much. However, Carpenter added, Jacobson is not "a novelist to be dismissed. His forte is character-drawing of a lovingly vicious kind." Carpenter also noted that once Jacobson figures out what to do with his oddball characters, "he'll be a novelist to reckon with."

In Redback Jacobson uses Australian material from his time as a lecturer in that country. Leon Forelock is a bright young Jewish Cambridge graduate recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency to cleanse Australia of unwanted elements, including homosexuals and drug addicts. This unlikely hero is, of course, sidetracked by various and sundry sexual adventures. Less well received than his other books, Redback was described as "effervescent but long-winded" by Time Literary Supplement critic Gerald Mangan. Turton considered it "in some ways the least sharp of [Jacobson's] three satires on the intellectual life."

In The Very Model of a Man Jacobson revisits the story of Cain. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly felt that the writer is "nothing if not daring," but faulted the book as "crashingly dull, not to mention relentlessly unfunny." A contributor for Kirkus Reviews described The Very Model of a Man as a "smug novel that aspires to rip the lid off religious convention and conviction," other reviewers were still more favorable in their evaluations. Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Eric Korn commented on Jacobson's "seething comic inventiveness [which] is shot through with rage at Man's (and therefore God's) criminal, tragic inadequacy."

In No More Mister Nice Guy Jacobson deals with "the cycle of sexual attraction and repulsion, desire and fear," according to Turton. His protagonist in this outing, Frank Ritz, is a television critic recently separated from his partner and out to relive old sexual conquests and perhaps have some new ones along the way. Such exploits range from prostitutes to a feisty comedienne. "This is a fierce, combative sort of book," wrote Observer critic Alex Ivanovitch, "filled with the sound of arguing voices and polemic." Reviewing the novel in the Times Literary Supplement, Germaine Greer wrote that No More Mister Nice Guy is "another attempt by Jacobson to be seriously funny. Some of the time it comes off, which is all that could be expected." Greer went on to note that Jacobson "doesn't want his readers to feel good; he is in search of Beckett's only genuine laugh, the laugh mirthless." Reviewing the paperback reprint of the novel, a contributor to Books concluded that No More Mister Nice Guy is a "wry and extremely funny novel."

The Mighty Walzer takes readers into the world of competitive ping-pong. Jacobson was, as a youth, one of the top-ten junior table-tennis players in England. Protagonist Oliver Walzer tells his story, from his Manchester roots in the 1950s, to Cambridge, and on to Italy, where the adult Walzer now makes a meager living teaching. Gerald Jacobs noted in a Spectator review of the novel the "familiar Jacobson features—the comedy of sexual exploration, the male disdain of the female," and commented that they have "in this novel found their most comfortable habitat yet." Jonathan Bate, reviewing the novel in the Times Literary Supplement, called it "a classic Bildungsroman of adolescent growth, sexual initiation, departure from home, disillusionment, and eventual worldly-wise return to the scene of youthful triumphs and disasters." Observer contributor Andrew Anthony called The Mighty Walzer "a beautifully written book—poignant, moving, hilarious—that explores a rich variety of semi-autobiographical themes: family and Jewishness, adolescent ambitions and the acceptance of adulthood, love and death…. It's the sort of book that might change your life. It could even save table tennis."

"Howard Jacobson gets funnier and more exhilarating with each new novel," remarked New Statesman reviewer Peter Bradshaw in his assessment of The Making of Henry. Protagonist Henry Nagel is a retired university lecturer in England. Almost sixty years old, Henry has had a solid if unspectacular life, punctuated by his mediocre academic career, his frequent flings with married women, and his Oedipal psychological traumas brought on by his relationships with his parents. Unexpectedly, Henry has inherited a luxurious apartment in upscale St. John's Woods, though he is unsure if the flat was once owned by his father or one of his father's mistresses. Henry moves into this new home and soon meets Moira, owner of a local patisserie and several years his junior. Moira exerts a calming influence on Henry, and it seems he is finally ready to embark on a steady and responsible relationship—if he can stop arguing with his dead father, and decide on a direction for himself. Although Henry is not "the most likable protagonist," his "honesty and foibles make for a meaningful read," commented Marta Segal Block in Booklist.

Kalooki Nights "makes powerfully relevant use of [Jacobson's] trademark ferocious wit and excoriating commentary," noted a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Now a successful cartoonist, Max Glickman grew up in 1950s England, where he was frequently conflicted by his Jewish heritage. His childhood best friend, Manny Washinsky, was also Jewish, as well as obsessed with the Holocaust. Their play included recreations of concentration camp life and Nazi tortures in an abandoned air- raid bunker that served as their playground. Together, the two planned to create a comic-book magnum opus covering five thousand years of Jewish suffering, but the project remained unfinished as the two grew up and apart. While Max went to art school and struggled to establish his life and career, Manny went to prison, convicted of a brutal murder. When Manny is released from prison, a Nazi sympathizer hires Max to develop a film treatment based on Manny's life. The turbulent reunion of the childhood friends brings to light emotional crises and disturbing revelations about their pasts and their Jewish identities.

Jacobson's "prose [in Kalooki Nights] is pure pleasure—concise, markedly insightful, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny—and his message, ultimately, is a heartbreaker," commented Michele Leber in Booklist. "Like all Jacobson's books, [Kalooki Nights is] dark and funny. But it's also an extended meditation on belonging: it speaks to, and is a product of, the turbulent times in which we live," observed Rachel Cooke in the Observer. New Statesman critic Tim Adams called Kalooki Nights "the most brilliantly ambitious (and ambitiously brilliant)" of Jacobson's novels to date.

Jacobson is also the author of several popular nonfiction titles, including In the Land of Oz, a book of impressions on his travels in Australia; Roots Schmoots: Journeys among Jews; and Seriously Funny, the last an attempt at defining what makes things humorous. Casting a jaundiced eye on the land down under with In the Land of Oz, Jacobson sets a tone "determinedly bright throughout," related Alan Ross in a Times Literary Supplement review, "no mean task in a volume of 380 pages, especially one in which Jacobson's happier moments usually occur when watching the dust settle behind him on his previous port of call." In Roots Schmoots Jacobson records his travels among Jewish people from New York to Israel and Lithuania in an "informed and witty account," according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. Adapted from a television series of the same name, Seriously Funny is a survey of the comic from around the world and through time.

In both his novels and his nonfiction works, Jacobson has pushed the limits of traditional humor, exploring the human condition with tongue firmly placed in cheek. "As a writer, he is everything you could wish for. His prose is clever, funny, stylish and full of learning," observed Cooke. In assessing Jacobson's work, ContemporaryWriters.com critic Daniel Hahn commented that "for their similarities [Jacobson's] novels are all great reads, fresh and tremendously funny." Despite the humor, as Turton concluded, there are "important human concerns … addressed in his seriously funny novels."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 207: British Novelists since 1960, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999, pp. 156-162.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August, 2004, Marta Segal Block, review of The Making of Henry, p. 1899; March 15, 2007, Michele Leber, review of Kalooki Nights, p. 24.

Books, summer, 1999, review of No More Mister Nice Guy, p. 17.

Entertainment Weekly, April 13, 2007, Clark Collis, review of Kalooki Nights, p. 79.

Hudson Review, summer, 1984, Dean Flower, "Fiction Chronicle," pp. 301-316.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1994, review of The Very Model of a Man, p. 937; July 15, 2004, review of The Making of Henry, p. 649; February 1, 2007, review of Kalooki Nights, p. 92.

London Review of Books, November 15, 1984, Humphrey Carpenter, "Kiss Me, Hardy," p. 23; February 18, 1988, review of In the Land of Oz, p. 22.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 15, 1984, Charles Champlin, review of Coming from Behind, p. 8.

New Statesman, April 24, 1992, Bryan Cheyette, review of The Very Model of a Man, p. 38; March 5, 1993, Simon Louvish, review of Roots Schmoots: Journeys among Jews, p. 39; June 14, 2004, Peter Bradshaw, "Fiction: One Last Fling," review of The Making of Henry, p. 54; July 17, 2006, Tim Adams, "Quick on the Draw," review of Kalooki Nights, p. 57.

New Yorker, April 30, 2007, review of Kalooki Nights, p. 83.

New York Times Book Review, January 15, 1984, Michael Leapman, "Comic Failure, Grim Obsession," p. 8; August 25, 1985, Ivan Gold, review of Peeping Tom, p. 12.

Observer (London, England), September 14, 1986, review of Redback, p. 27; April 19, 1998, Alex Ivanovitch, "Sex as a Foreign Language," review of No More Mister Nice Guy, p. 17; August 15, 1999, Andrew Anthony, "Frankly, Howard …," review of The Mighty Walzer, p. 13; June 25, 2005, Rachel Cooke, "Still Angry after All These Years" (profile of Johnson).

Publishers Weekly, November 22, 1993, review of Roots Schmoots, pp. 52-53; September 19, 1994, review of The Very Model of a Man, p. 52; January 1, 2007, review of Kalooki Nights, p. 29.

Spectator, October 3, 1987, review of In the Land of Oz, p. 30; February 8, 1997, Philip Hensher, review of Seriously Funny: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime, p. 36; September 4, 1999, Gerald Jacobs, "The Mystique of Ping-Pong," review of The Mighty Walzer, p. 29; May 11, 2002, John de Falbe, "Not Funny or Painful Enough," review of Who's Sorry Now?, p. 39; June 5, 2004, Sandra Howard, "Waking up Rather Late in the Day," review of The Making of Henry, p. 42; June 30, 2006, Olivia Glazebrook, "Sex, Comics and the Holocaust," review of Kalooki Nights.

Times Literary Supplement, October 12, 1984, Alan Franks, "Haunted by Hardy," p. 1167; October 31, 1986, Gerald Mangan, "Groveller," p. 1225; September 25, 1987, Alan Ross, "The 1958 beneath the 1986," p. 1042; May 1, 1992, Eric Korn, "Ancient Fratricide," p. 20; April 24, 1998, Germaine Greer, "Organ Concerto," p. 21; August 20, 1999, Jonathan Bate, "Ping-Pong Boy," p. 19; April 26, 2002, Bryan Cheyette, "Hard Man, Soft Man," review of Who's Sorry Now?, p. 21; June 11, 2004, Stephen Abell, "A Clean Old Man at Last: Howard Jacobson and the Grammar of Perception," review of The Making of Henry, p. 19; July 7, 2006, Marco Roth, "Deliberate Bad Taste: Howard Jacobson's Comedy of British Jewishness," review of Kalooki Nights, p. 21.

ONLINE

ContemporaryWriters.com,http://www.contemporarywriters.com/ (September 22, 2007), Daniel Hahn, "Jacobson."

OTHER

Arena (television documentary), British Broadcasting Corp., 1985.