The Trojan Jew - E-book - ePub

This is a mildly poisonous satire from the grave - the intertwined stories of the launch of a Nazi project in WW2 Berlin and its conclusion half a century later in Manhattan.  Wallace Markfield published 4 full-length novels (3 satires + 1 thriller) in the 20th century.  His 5th was interrupted by his death in 2002.  It was nearly done, not that hard to finish, but thoroughly unmarketable in the context of 9/11.  Much has changed since then, so now that 5th novel can finally be released - The Trojan Jew.  Like To an Early Grave, it deals with death, features several bizarre Manhattan street scenes, and opens with an offense against feminism.  Like Teitelbaum's Window it tells the story of a boy growing up in the late 1930s, difference being that this one's father is a member of Hitler's inner circle.  Like You Could Live if They Let You, it includes an out-of-control comic named Jules.  Like his novella Multiple Orgasms, it revolves around a mildly frenetic high-maintenance yenta; or at least from her perspective it does.  Like Radical Surgery, it is a very high stakes intercontinental thriller.  Unlike any of them, it toggles back and forth between 2 separate stories in 2 separate times.  Like every one of them, it's littered with bizarre conversations, and the ending is a bit twisted.  The protagonist is equally saintly and demonic.  It's most accurately categorized as a SIAT (Satirical Information-Age Tragedy).  The target audience is amateur cynics, so if you can read it without taking offense, you're a pro.    Everything we do has its context, as does everything we create.  Although far from perfect, our current era provides a better context for this novel's release than did the one that followed Wallace's death 22 years ago- could hardly be worse.    His previous novel was a disappointment to many who had expected him to write yet another Jewish novel - apparently that's a real genre, or was back then - so in this one, he gave them what they had asked for, but not-exactly what they wanted.  As David Bowie said, never play to the gallery.    Wallace wrote novels, but his day job was that of a speech writer at a big Jewish PR NGO.  At some point, it occurred to him that the director's incompetence presented as great a danger to Jews as had Hitler's policies - only half joking.  And then he thought, What if it were intentional?  Seriously, were, not was - proper grammar was second-nature to him, which served to heighten the comic effect whenever he deviated from it.  So he began to imagine the role of a covert Nazi at the head of such a non-profit.    He spent over a decade working on this novel about a small foreign infiltration culminating in disaster for NYC, only to be upstaged by reality on 9/11/01.  That had happened before.  He spent the 1980s writing a novel about the breakup of the Soviet Union, completely unthinkable when he began it, yesterday's news by the time it hit the bookstores.    In both instances, he had seen a full decade into the future, but thought it was only his imagination.