Book Fail. Something called "Roots Schmoots" by Howard Jacobson

I took a break from Mark Twain and his travels at the equator:

Recently I went for a long enough bike ride to make it necessary to scout out a washroom at one of our local train stations. Thank Goodness, the facility was open--you can't always depend on availability of public washrooms during the plague.  haha.

This train station has one of my favorite book exchange racks, which I have missed. Sometimes I find the best old books that others have discarded this way. I was so delirious that I fell for this one.

"Roots Schmoots--Journeys Among Jews". Information about the heritage and genealogy of Jewish families, I hoped. And this too, like Twain's book, is a travel book, of sorts.

The author is British, of a Jewish family from Manchester; he is near 80 by now. He considers himself a humorist, I guess. He is a fine writer. His family worked hard to provide him with a great education to become a writer and critic.

He travels from the UK in about 1990 to discover information about Jewish communities on the path of where his families may have been. The book seems "dated" by now; the tone has not aged well. George H.W. Bush is President of the US. Desert Storm is current news. This book does not "know" about the attacks of 2001 (and how that changed us). We don't need glib, sassy humorists so much just now.

The author seems not to "like" his subjects--for as far as I got; about 1/3 of way.  His tone is disparaging to living people who he names! Some are public figures and some maybe not; I was shocked by this. 

He should have titled the book "Journeys Among Jews" and taken a kinder approach; not gone for the cheap laugh and caustic remark.

I slammed the book shut when he attended a photo exhibit in Los Angeles of Roman Vishniac, a 20th Century photographer who specialized in photos from the ghettos of Europe in the 1920's, 30's. Literally capturing the last sunsets of a population soon to be betrayed and massacred.

Jacobson is scornful of these photos! Seemingly making fun of the poses of scholars, rabbis, etc. Again, I was shocked. The author wrote this just 40 years or so from the end of the Holocaust (and 30 more years have passed and people are still not healed!) The people in the photos were soon to be killed, but did not know this--Jacobson knew what happened to them. Insensitive? At least.           I hope the book resolved itself in the end; I hope that in the author eventually cultivated a better attitude toward the people of his heritage.   I couldn't hang around to find out; I will avoid any of his books that I happen upon.

I'm writing this only because I feel like writing something, into the Google-ether in the fall of 2020.

Now, back to Mark Twain.