Being something of a disaffected Orthodox Jew myself, I was captivated by Shalom Auslander’s no-holds-barred evocation of the right-wing modern Orthodox world in his new memoir “Foreskin’s Lament.”
Echoing the themes of his debut story collection, “Beware of God,” “Foreskin’s” travels along parallel tracks, documenting Auslander’s increasing God-centric paranoia, fueled by his wife’s pregnancy, while detailing how a product of the yeshiva day-school system ended up living a proudly secular (albeit God-haunted) life in Woodstock, New York.

Foreskin's Lament is funny, poignant and written in crisp and clear prose. It'll put a smile on your face and a snicker in your smirk. Auslander, living in Israel, imagines describing a failed drug deal with some Arabs to his mother. Foreskin's Lament: A memoir, By Shalom Auslander If you wish Richard Dawkins could quip like David Sedaris, then this is the misery memoir for you. William Sutcliffe. Sunday 24 February 2008 01:00. Foreskin's Lament - Main Character Establishment 1,550 words, approx. 6 pages How is Foreskin's character established in the play Foreskin's Lament' E. Fitzgerald-Baird Greg McGee uses several different techniques to establish Foreskin's character in the play Foreskin's Lamen.

Auslander is at his macho-man silliest when he concentrates on the former, detailing the gruesome fates he envisions for his wife and unborn baby like his day job was screenwriter for “Saw 12.” Having spent his life escaping the crippling expectations of his family and religious community, it is entirely understandable that Auslander would want to avoid encumbering himself with equivalent literary burdens. And yet, the shock value of his wife’s grisly (imagined) death, a clever side-step around readers’ expectations of “proper” subject matter the first time he brings it up, is increasingly less entertaining the next 25 times. Auslander, or his authorial stand-in, is still standing in front of that same chain-link fence, the one with the “Beware of God” sign, pondering the source of the feral snuffling coming from behind it, and daydreaming about rattling the fence just one more time. Auslander has spent a lifetime removing the shackles of religion, but God, CEO of the “Department of Ironic Punishmentation,” still threatens to bite, intent on zinging Shalom for all his real and perceived trespasses against the deity.

Auslander is a fabulist, a spinner of tall tales, but his ace in the hole is the arc of his own life–from his ultra-Orthodox day school to a stint at Yeshiva University’s high school and a year at a reform school/yeshiva in Israel. Having once been an insider, and now removed himself from the closed circle of Orthodoxy, Auslander is an astute observer of this alien world–educated in its ways but deeply skeptical of its assertions. Readers unfamiliar with Orthodox Judaism will imagine that Auslander is prone to exaggeration; those familiar with its ways will know how little he does. From the competitive blessing bees to young Shalom’s forbidden desires for non-kosher Slim Jims to “the warm security blanket of absolute belief” he briefly wraps around himself in Israel, Auslander’s story is that of any rebellious Orthodox son dreaming of escape into the wider world outside the prison-house of religion. Whether every word of Auslander’s memoir is literally true is debatable (I’m guessing that quite a bit of it is exaggerated for effect, as is his right); but there is no doubt that “Foreskin’s Lament” feels true.
— written by Saul Austerlitz

Abstract

Foreskin's Lament Quotes

This thesis begins by arguing that the defining moment of New Zealand nationalism occurred not at Gallipoli but in Britain in 1905 with the triumphant tour of the All Blacks. The myths were later strengthened in the 1930s cultural literary movement which placed the 'ordinary bloke', and his traditions, at the centre of importance in New Zealand society. While this literary movement diminished towards the 1970s, it continued to exert a powerful influence in New Zealand up till the 1980s when authors, such as Greg McGee, sought to challenge the relevance of this nationalism and definition of masculinity. The intention of this thesis is not only to consider the mutually reinforcing areas of masculinity and rugby in generating a distinctively New Zealand identity, but more importantly to demonstrate how perceptions towards masculinity have been reviewed and reevaluated since the late 1970s. Rugby has also had a role in challenging and undermining those myths of identity. In order to chart the shifts in these perceptions, the thesis will not only focus on Greg McGee's Foreskin's Lament and its subsequent revision in 1985,but also on Whitemen. Old Scores, Skinand Bone and the accompanying literary criticism which deals with all of these texts to destabilise the myths and suggest where masculinity now stands in New Zealand.