Capture The Mighty Walzer Documented By Howard Jacobson Shown As Script

received The Mighty Walzer for early review and had a tough time getting into it, It was wellwritten, but just didn't capture my attention, I was having flashbacks to all the novels I was assigned to read for English Literature critical analysis class, You know, the ones that are shining examples of literature, grammar, sentence structure, tone, era, voice but some how manage to be the most boring books on the planet.
Yes, I could write a term paper on the book and can appreciate its literary worth, but that doesn't mean I enjoyed it as a source of entertainment.
On the front cover it notes that fans of Phillip Roth will presumably like this author's style, I would agree. Unfortunately, Phillip Roth does not excite me either, There is some satire, but unless you understand Yiddish and British slang, this might make your eyes cross, I think the comedic relief was lost of me due to my limited understanding of the language, I discovered I'm just not that interested in reading pages about ping pong facts, plays, moves or strategies couple with rambling accounts of growing up Jewish in Manchester.
I did put the book down, thinking that perhaps my mood would change on another day, Maybe I just needed to be in a more serious frame of mind to enjoy this read, but after pushing through another hundred pages, I was still rather bored and asleep.
For the writing,Stars. For the story well, it is tough. And: WARNINGSPOILERS, sort of.
The story could have been about a kid with a natural talent for pingpong, We could have followed him through travails and into triumph, Nope. Not happening. Instead, he takes the usual route, finding life has detours and, lordy be, sex, His emotional involvement with sex and life and his Jewish family sidetrack him, So instead of an extraordinary pingpong player, we have a talented kid who falls off the pace, Another warning: keep paper towels handy in case the book begins to leak some of the spunk the kid delivers himself of albeit subtly.
This is a funny, that is, humorous, book,
In lieu of such a glorious story, we get, at the end, a reunion of sorts after several decades of being away from the sport and the old buds.
Meh. Another disappointment. This could've been really good but it didn't really go anywhere and it took a long time not to get there, A book about a young man with a conceit about himself which I thought proved unfounded, One of the biggest frustrations with this book was the use of many words in another language either Yiddish or Polish or maybe German or maybe something else I don't know.
I don't have a problem with writers using the occasional word from another language if it clarifies their meaning, But in this case they were used so prolifically that it made some sentences completely unreadable and not understandable, I couldn't understand the point of using language like this if it clouds the meaning instead of enlightening it, And no appendix or glossary to help out either

I think in essence the book came down tothings, A nostalgic reminiscence of childhood which was entertaining but repetitive.
And

a study of someone growing up with an idea or expectation about themselves that doesn't materialise, The latter part could've been interesting if explore deeply enough but I think it reflected the overall superficiality of this entire book, Well, call me derivative or simply lazy, but this novel really reminded me of "Under the Frog" by Tibor Fischer which I read a few months ago.


Both books pretend to revolve around the exotic wonders of a sport halfunknown to the British audience basketball there, pingpong here and are set in thes and both eventually take a long detour somewhere else.


Whereas Fischer aimed a bit too high with his sketch of Hungary and theRevolution, Jacobson decided to cope with a more familiar territory: Manchester, well actually the mostly Jewish neighbourhood of Manchester he grew up in.
Which is nothing new as he did the same in the only other book by him I read so far, "Kalooki Nights",

And no surprises that the term "kalooki" pops up in "The Mighty Walzer" too, alongside with a whole lot of semiyiddish terms washed in the Mancunian slang.
Beware you readers of Isaac B, Singer, Abraham Yehoshua, Bernard Malamud and Jonathan Safran Foer because what you learned about some yiddish expressions such as "meshuggah", "schlomo", "shtetl", "barmitzvah" or "goy" won't save you here.


The truth is that Jacobson decided to add some spice to his story with the Jewish background of the sexual initiation and disillusion of life of his Oliver Walzer with an avalanche of tonguetwisting words that are not always selfexplanatory because of the context they're put in.


Have I written "sexual initiation"
Yessir,
But hang on a moment: according to the Sunday Telegraph this is "the first great novel about pingpong" and "one of the greatest sporting novels ever", is that untrue
Kind of, I'm afraid.


Let's rather say that Jacobson wrote his own "Portnoy's Lament", leaving the pingpong bat idle for most of this novel and not always finding a decent substitute for it.


All that said, there are some good and a few very good things in "The Mighty Walzer", First of all, I should mention the brilliant part with Walzer attending Cambridge University, Well, this is very well written stuff: witty and merciless with that decadent Oxbridge life which I peeped and eavesdropped at clearly out of my envy for not having studied there in my heydays.
For a few pages Jacobson forgets his prolixity and yiddishMancunian patois becoming the satirist he doesn't manage to be in the rest of the book.


Alas! This sort of literary miracle happens only for a few pages,
But it's good to know that Jacobson could make it if he only wanted to,
"The Mighty Walzer" doesn't have that much to do with pingpong and it's deinitely not a "sporting novel", but Howard Jacobson is able to get at least those ten points which make this novel worth a match.

It's all about spin, lads,
BABT

Never fancied this author for some reason however Ris flinging us this so I'll give it a go,

BBC blurb From the beginning Oliver Walzer is a natural at pingpong, Even with his improvised bat the Collins Classic edition of 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' he can chop, flick, halfvolley like a champion,

At sex he is not so natural, being shy and frightened of women, But with tuition from Sheeny Waxman, fellow member of the Akiva Social Club Table Tennis team, his game improves, And while the Akiva boys teach him everything he needs to know about pingpong, his father Joel Walzer teaches him everything there is to know about 'swag'.


Unabashedly autobiographical, this is a hilarious and heartbreaking story of one man's coming of age in's Manchester,

"Howard Jacobson won the Mann Booker infor "The Finkler Question", but this is his masterpiece, "

hmmm begone pure shite!

Produced by Clive Brill A Pacificus production for BBC Radio, The theme of pingpong threads through this story, But, in its way, it is peripheral to the narrative, much the same way that cricket is peripheral to sitelinkAnother Country, What we get is the story of a young boy, growing up both bound to and afflicted by his people, Family, Judaism or the repudiation of it, the old country or the neighborhood are inextricable from who and what Oliver Walzer is, Delightful or repugnant personalities in the way of his friends, enemies, opponents, family and inlaws lend this book its particular spice, Oliver is as much a product of his background as the Queen of England and no less subject to its unwritten laws,

But what really shines through in this novel is the exuberance of Mr, Jacobsons language. Incisive and occasionally bewildering metaphors and similes pepper this book, describing people, places, clothing, accents and slang with astounding variety and inventiveness, Mr. Jacobson is clearly in love with idiom and he slams it with the same verve that the titular character swings his paddles,

Where the book proves irksome, however, is its copious use of Yiddish slang, If youre not Jewish or have no experience with the jargon, much of the sentences and paragraphs will prove utterly baffling, You can worm out the general gist by reading the context, But precise meaning may elude you,

No matter. True bibliophiles will find themselves absorbed as Oliver Walzer wanders from childhood into old age and ruminates along the way about lifes little vicissitudes and his own ambivalent attitude toward success.

.