My One and Only Love (Hardcover)

One answer lies in the way the novel is constructed. It is based on biographical research supposedly conducted by one Bird Stringshtein (don't let the name fool you - he dislikes jazz and is "definitely not a brilliant musician"). The book is composed almost entirely of transcripts of a series of interviews conducted by Bird with three main characters: a shy Israeli trumpeter called Danny Zilber, briefly but spectacularly popular in the 1960's; Sabrina (aka Elza), the Mata Hari figure who enters Danny's life briefly but cataclysmically, giving the novel its title; and Avrum Shtil, impresario and self-proclaimed "all-time number one Jewish showbiz tycoon". This structure allows the author to hide behind his three mouthpieces, and as none of them has English as a mother tongue, the main requirement is that their voices remain consistent. Thus Danny is the eternal innocent idealist, his descriptions of even the most intimate moments lapsing into hackneyed soft-porn clichés like "I kissed every millimeter of her snowy flesh". Sabrina, by contrast, has the knowing but still vulnerable tone of experience and disillusionment.

It's Avrum's voice that dominates, though. He is an irresistible monster - a crude, ruthless, self-aggrandising bully, described by Danny as "a kind of street animal motivated by pure instinct and greed" who "even in Hebrew ... speaks a language entirely of his own." The language in question is a mix of Jackie Mason and Tony Soprano. To give a flavour, here is Avrum describing the first stirrings of his grand musical idea: "Check it out, just there while I was thinking about it I started to see prime numbers rolling in my brain, you know wha'a mean, like 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13 14, 15, 16 ... I love the prime numbers. They are so united they remind me of the Jews coz nobody except themselves can interfere and divide them at all." His plan is to make music that mines the German capacity for self-recrimination, that will "make the Germans cry like crazy and feel about themselves ... and get them to say 'sorry' big time." Or, as Danny puts it, "Avrum was the first to recognise the commercial potential of the Shoah. He was the first to understand how to transform German guilt into gold."

To appreciate the layers of irony in all this, it helps to know something about the author's own position and background. As a musician, he is a passionate opponent of the commercialisation of music. He left his native Israel (or Isra-hell as he is apt to call it) in reaction to treatment of the Palestinians and to pursue his studies in German philosophy. He is a committed anti-Zionist and self-proclaimed "obsessed Germano-phile". All this adds to the often outrageous humour of this book, and (perhaps) allows him to get away with stuff that others would think twice about saying. In one episode, for example, Avrum is asked by a secret Zionist organisation to hide Dr. Ingelberg, a captured Nazi war criminal clearly based on Josef Mengele. He is to be kept safe as he is "the rock of Jewish existence" without whom "the whole Jewish nation might lose its way". Ingelberg's liking for pork sausages presents a problem until Zionist researchers come up with the solution: a kosher pig. "Can you believe it?" asks Avrum, "A circumsized pig, with cloven feet and two stomachs ... wearing a skull cap. In other words the pig was more Jewish than the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi." As you can see, politically correct it most certainly isn't.

Clearly there are political points being made here, but the sly humour that undercuts nearly everything, along with the reckless mingling of history and fantasy, makes it hard at times to distinguish the serious from the satirical, the polemical from the comical. This emerges clearly in the glossary at the back, which is a source of fun in itself. Secreted among the straightforward definitions of Hebrew and Arabic terms and historical and mock-historical names, you find more barbed entries like the ones for kosher ("Jewish dietary regulations guaranteeing zero assimilation") or goy ("Gentile. As a derogatory term, confers inferiority on anyone who fails to be Jewish").

As for the plot itself, it involves music business hype, in-fighting among Zionist groups, plots to smuggle arms and people in the cases of "Gulliver violins" and copious quantities of sex in various levels of perversity, the latter usually described in a tone of detached amusement. In describing the content and style of both this book and its predecessor, it seems to be standard procedure to mention Portnoy's Complaint, but, especially in their tendency to elevate a simple idea into a grand academic theory or world view, a possible influence that came to my mind was The Dice Man, Luke Reinhart's cult book from the sixties. Whatever its influences, it's an enjoyable and intermittently thought provoking read, liberally scattered with rich humour that runs the gamut from farcical and mischievous through sarcastic to darkly ironic. As Avrum himself would say, the keys are in the ignition (just to let you know that the book is out now and available to buy).

His writing,like his saxaphone playing,is somewhat bombastic but there is an underlying humorful vein running through that relieves the intensity.

His diatribes on fringe radio stations and on stage are well known and he has set himself up as a fall guy for extremist,albeit leftist,opinion.

He is where left meets right !