Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson (born 25 August 1942) is a British novelist and journalist. He is known for writing comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters . He is a Man Booker Prize winner.

Background

Jacobson was born in Manchester, Lancashire, brought up in Prestwich, and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield,^[1] before going on to study English at Downing College, Cambridge, under F. R. Leavis.^[2] He lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to Britain to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His later teaching posts included a period at Wolverhampton Polytechnic from 1974 to 1980.^[3]

Although Jacobson has described himself as "a Jewish Jane Austen" (in response to being described as "the English Phillip Roth"),^[4] he also states, "I'm not by any means conventionally Jewish. I don't go to shul. What I feel is that I have a Jewish mind, I have a Jewish intelligence. I feel linked to previous Jewish minds of the past. I don't know what kind of trouble this gets somebody into, a disputatious mind. What a Jew is has been made by the experience of 5,000 years, that's what shapes the Jewish sense of humour, that's what shaped Jewish pugnacity or tenaciousness." He maintains that "comedy is a very important part of what I do."^[5]

Jacobson has been married three times.^[6] He married his first wife, Barbara, in 1964, when he was 22, with whom he has one son, Conrad.^[7][8] He married his second wife, Rosalin Sadler, in 1978; they divorced in 1995. In 2005, Jacobson was married for the third time, to radio and TV documentary maker Jenny De Yong. He stated, "My last wife. I'm home, it's right".^[9][10]

In August 2014, Jacobson was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.^[11]

Writing career

His time at Wolverhampton was to form the basis of his first novel, Coming from Behind, a campus comedy about a failing polytechnic that plans to merge facilities with a local football club. The episode of teaching in a football stadium in the novel is, according to Jacobson in a 1985 BBC interview, the only portion of the novel based on a true incident. He also wrote a travel book in 1987, titled In the Land of Oz, which was researched during his time as a visiting academic in Sydney.

His fiction, particularly in the six novels he has published since 1998, is characterised chiefly by a discursive and humorous style. Recurring subjects in his work include male–female relations and the Jewish experience in Britain in the mid- to late-20th century. He has been compared to prominent Jewish-American novelists such as Philip Roth, in particular for his habit of creating doppelgängers of himself in his fiction.

His 1999 novel The Mighty Walzer, about a teenage table tennis champion, won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing.^[12] It is set in the Manchester of the 1950s and Jacobson, himself a table tennis fan in his teenage years, admits that there is more than an element of autobiography in it.^[5] His 2002 novel Who's Sorry Now? – the central character of which is a Jewish luggage baron of South London – and his 2006 novel Kalooki Nights were longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Jacobson described Kalooki Nights as "the most Jewish novel that has ever been written by anybody, anywhere".^[13] It won the 2007 JQ Wingate Prize.^[14]

As well as writing fiction, he also contributes a weekly column for The Independent newspaper as an op-ed writer. In recent times, he has, on several occasions, attacked anti-Israel boycotts, and for this reason has been labelled a "liberal Zionist".^[15]

In October 2010 Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Finkler Question, which was the first comic novel to win the prize since Kingsley Amis's The Old Devils in 1986.^[16] The book, published by Bloomsbury, explores what it means to be Jewish today and is also about "love, loss and male friendship".^[17] Andrew Motion, the chair of the judges, said: "The Finkler Question is a marvellous book: very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle. It is all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be. A completely worthy winner of this great prize."^[17] His novel Zoo Time won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize (2013), Jacobson's second time winning the prize (the first in 1999 for The Mighty Walzer).^[18]

In September 2014, Jacobson's novel J was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.^[19]

Jacobson has argued that an education in science and technology is more conducive to terrorism than an education in the arts and social sciences.

Broadcasting

Jacobson has scripted television programmes including Channel 4's Howard Jacobson Takes on the Turner, in 2000, and The South Bank Show in 2002, which featured an edition entitled "Why the Novel Matters". An earlier profile went out in the series in 1999 and a television documentary entitled "My Son the Novelist" preceded it as part of the Arena series in 1985.^[20] His two non-fiction books – Roots Schmoots: Journeys Among Jews (1993) and Seriously Funny: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime (1997) – were turned into television series.

Jacobson presented "Jesus The Jew", episode one of Christianity, A History, on the UK's Channel 4 in January 2009^[21] and in 2010 he presented "Creation", the first part of the Channel 4 series The Bible: A History.^[22]

On 3 November 2010, Jacobson appeared in an Intelligence Squared debate (stop bashing Christians, Britain is becoming an anti-Christian country) in favour of the motion.^[23]

In February 2011 Jacobson appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. His musical choices included works by J. S. Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Louis Armstrong as well as the rare 1964 single "Look at Me" by the Whirlwinds. His favourite was "You’re a Sweetheart" by Al Bowlly with Lew Stone and His Band.^[24]

He wrote and presented the Australian biographical series Brilliant Creatures (2014) on four famous expatriate iconoclasts.^[25]

Bibliography

Fiction

• Coming From Behind, Chatto & Windus, 1983
• Peeping Tom, Chatto & Windus, 1984
• Redback, Bantam, 1986
• The Very Model of a Man, Viking, 1992
• No More Mister Nice Guy, Cape, 1998
• The Mighty Walzer, Cape, 1999
• Who's Sorry Now?, Cape, 2002
• The Making of Henry, Cape, 2004
• Kalooki Nights, Cape, 2006
• The Act of Love, Cape, 2008
• The Finkler Question, Bloomsbury, 2010 (Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize) ISBN 978-1-4088-0910-5
• Zoo Time, Bloomsbury, 2012
• J, Bloomsbury, 2014 (shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize)^[19]
• Shylock Is My Name: a novel, Hogarth Feb. 2016

Non-fiction

• Shakespeare's Magnanimity: Four Tragic Heroes, Their Friends and Families (co-author with Wilbur Sanders), Chatto & Windus, 1978
• In the Land of Oz, Hamish Hamilton, 1987
• Roots Schmoots: Journeys Among Jews, Viking, 1993
• Seriously Funny: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime, Viking, 1997
• Whatever It Is, I Don't Like It, Bloomsbury, 2011

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Howard Jacobson

• Audio: Writing Lab interview with Howard Jacobson from OpenLearn
• Audio: Howard Jacobson in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show The Forum