TBR: 2/24

Well, I finished Herman Wouk’s The Hope on Sunday (and then read Sci-Fi in the form of Integral Trees on Monday. Again, not a TBR book). Reading makes me feel like reading, but after these two books I definitely need something to detox. Also, I discovered I still can’t spell Israel.

Let me back up. The Hope is semi-contemporary fiction, though it will be straight historical in another thirty years. It covers the wars Israel first fights as a nation, starting in 1949 and culminating with their winning of the eastern half of Jerusalem in 1967 during the so called six day war. On this account I thought it would be rather depressing political non-fiction.

It didn’t occur to me that I rather like politics in my fiction.

Really, politics are one of my favorite things to read in science fiction or fantasy, because in order to do it well an author must have a convincing dynamic, whether that be factions within a country or the clash of outside cultures. I enjoy the cleverness of such art, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised to have enjoyed that same thing here, in a novelized retelling of real world politics. Was it depressing? Yes, real life is more sneaky and cowardly than fiction. But it was also neat to have an idea of what the world was like, globally, sixty years ago, especially from a different nation’s perspective.

On top of that, this was a war novel, an element I’ve also come to enjoy in the exploratory fictions. Wouk’s depiction of war was highlighted by his clever maneuvering of characters so that, even though our main cast was fairly small, having only three real soldiers who could be considered main characters and two or three supporting characters who preformed administrative and command duties, we as readers still had the feeling of being everywhere. Oh sure, there were some fights that we missed and were given second hand through letters or debriefings, but for the major battles Wouk contrived to get us in the front seat, even if that meant making one character transfer from paratrooper to armor (read: tanks) halfway through the war, and then get injured during one battle so that he could end up in the fight for Eastern Jerusalem later in the same day. Nice orchestration and much appreciated, because to a civilian army maneuvers make more sense when you see them happen. It was also helpful geographically to get a sense that this place is north of the last battle, or whatnot. My geography is a little whimsical and depends heavily on events in history to pin down borders, especially ones which have fluctuated throughout history, so The Hope has done me the great boon of fixing Syria, Jordan, and Sinai permanently in my mind.

The sum of all this is I enjoyed the meat and bones of the story a lot more than expected, to the point were I would dare say I liked it.

But then you have the dessert, in the form of human relationships. And unlike in Potok’s book, the characters here are not suffering from any stream of conciseness induced distance that lets me obverse them without emotion. To varying degrees, I cared about all of the major characters within this book, and that means their mistakes hurt me. The back of the book promises three “equally remarkable women” – to balance out all the men, I suppose. It fails to mention one of my favorites, Nakhama {{1}} [[1]] Even though I respect her and cheered her victory, I have to say in real life I think it’s a little cowardly to go after the Emilys and not the person who, you know, made the vows to you in the first place. But what do I know?[[1]], who stays quietly in the background as a wife and mother but shines whenever the author’s pen deigns to fall on her. I suppose her story isn’t tragic enough to merit an equal status with the other characters. What women get this honor? Well, there’s Yael for starts, the gold digging female solider and, later, business genius who aims for love, a family and wealth and ends up with two out of three; Shayna, the unconventional but pious student who struggles with her own high standards and conflicting desires; and Emily, the utterly unnecessary American girl who makes the last half of the book torture to read. I ended up skimming through sections with her in it because she was vulgar – and that’s just considering her language. Her sense of humor was juvenile and base, and when characters who I had previously respected were in her company they fell right to her level of conversing without a blush. The book itself describes her as weird and I have no wish to argue with it. At any rate, because all the relationships (besides Nakhama’s half) are so complicated and messy, even though the story ends with a glimmer of possible hope for these three “remarkable” women, it feels rather like a desperate wish rather than a concrete surety.

In a lot of ways, the relationships in this book parallel Israel’s own turmoil, a mirroring that is in itself quite biblical. For instance, right from the start we are aware of the disparity between historical Jewish nationalism and this new, secular patriotism. The Jewish victors may sing psalms at the recaptured wall, yet very few care to observe the laws which give that wall meaning, and the younger ones – yes, even those born in Israel – are becoming ignorant of them. So too, there is dichotomy between traditional values and actual fact. Though most of the characters have a cultural respect for family and a desire for children, infidelity is – we are both told and shown – rampant amongst all levels and sexes and therefore culturally acceptable. Wouk takes no stance on whether this is outright “wrong” or not, but he never holds back on showing how the consequences of such inconstancy are painful both for the parties involved and all innocent bystanders.

To take another angle, the beliefs held by these returned Jews are as different as the accents they carry, and the tension inherent from having so many factions forced to work together makes up a large part of the political worry in the first section of the book. We see soldiers who are alight with zionism and those perfectly willing to desert first chance they get. For a brief moment, the world pauses to see if civil war will break out in this fragile country. Even on a global scale, the Jews at this point in history are anxious for allies, and they make friends with the Polish, the French, the English, and even the Germans in their attempt to get weapons. They are in no position to be picky about their friends, nor dare they expect their current allies to recognize them in the future. This cultural and political ambiguity is undoubtedly dangerous, as best displayed by the marriage of a strict Kosher man and an openly atheistic woman. They keep separate pots (color coded) and eat on separate table cloths (also color coded) and the wife’s bitter humor about the whole situation bids ill for their future happiness.

The parallels continue towards the middle of the book, when Israel starts to suffer not so much because of the war but because the world outside simply seems brighter. Emily enters the scene in full force as a tempting escape from sanity the everyday, and Yael leaves Tel Aviv to start a business in Los Angels (“Only for two years, so we can have the money to live well.” She tells her solider husband, but then toys with extending it to four). As readers, it is during this period that we learn about the yerida, the Jews who leave Israel for better lands, for promising futures. Can you blame them for wanting to leave a dreary and uncertain peace? Even if there is no war on today, what is there for them in this battle torn country? And yet, at the same time, where is loyalty and national pride? Those ideals are slowly picked up by Yael’s brother, the fighter pilot, who admits he has been studying the Talmud with one of the guys (just to know it, not because he’s getting religion or anything) and implies that he is no longer breaking his marriage vows. He urges his sister to return home. As another character puts it, earlier in the book, “. . . The Arabs don’t really need rockets, do they? They need patience. They just have to wait while Israel gradually leaks away to America. . . .”

Finally the book draws to an end, the Jews are – at the close of this chapter at least – victorious and safe. Yael comes home and vows never to leave again. Emily quietly exits the scene (too late, the book is over now). Shayna – well, she’s still a little depressing, but her head is up and she’s searching for her own path. Whatever it is, she knows it will not take her from Israel.