Kafka's Son

Начало книги

Call me Amschl.

All right, so don’t call me Amschl.* Nobody does anyway. Except when I’m called up to the Torah by my Hebrew name: Amschl ben Moshe.

* pronounced AHM-shl

This is a true story.

True story!?*

Humbug.

I’m sorry I yoked these two words that invariably begin late medieval Jewish folktales, even though I like the phrase “true story” for its literary ring, its trisyllabic succinctness, a kind of rite de passage into a make-believe world where beneficent ghosts — what else? they’re Jewish — often play a part.

But back to true story.

True story, let’s face it, is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron like weather forecaster (the only people in the workforce who, like presidential advisors, are paid for constantly being wrong).

True story, indeed. You have to be either an ox or a moron to hold credible that coupling. True story belongs in the same oxymoronic oxcart with dark light, sweet lemon, military intelligence.

Читать дальше →