- Howard Jacobson
Infobox Writer
name = Howard Jacobson
imagesize =
caption =
pseudonym =
birth_date = Birth date and age|1942|8|24|mf=y
birth_place = Manchester, England
death_date =
death_place =
occupation = novelist, columnist, broadcaster
nationality = British
period = 1983-present
genre =
subject =
movement =
debut_works =
influences =
influenced =
website =
footnotes =
main_work =The Mighty Walzer , 1999Howard Jacobson (born
24 August ,1942 ) is a Britishauthor . He is best known for writing comic novels which tend to revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters but he is also a non-fiction writer and journalist.Biography
Jacobson was born in
Manchester , brought up inPrestwich and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield, andDowning College, Cambridge , where he studied underF. R. Leavis . He lectured for three years at theUniversity of Sydney (where he was criticised by students for his teaching style and extra-curricular interests) before returning to England to teach atSelwyn College, Cambridge .His later teaching assignments included, in the 1970s, a stint at Wolverhampton Polytechnic.
Although he has described himself as "a Jewish Jane Austen," 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." [http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/articles/1185_howard_jacobson.htm]
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 which 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 which is based on a true incident.
His fiction, particularly in the five novels he has published since 1998, is characterised chiefly by a discursive, humorous style, and recurring subjects 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 their habit of creatingdoppelgänger s of themselves in their fiction. His 1999 novel "The Mighty Walzer", about a teenage table tennis champion, won theBollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing. It is set in theManchester of the 1950s and Jacobson, himself a teen ping pong fan, admits that there is more than an element of autobiography to it [ [http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/articles/1185_howard_jacobson.htm Howard Jacobson | www.somethingjewish.co.uk ] ] . Both it and his 2002 novel "Who's Sorry Now" - the central character of which is the Jewish luggage baron of South London - and his 2006 novel "Kalooki Nights" were longlisted for theMan Booker Prize .He is often referred to as "the British
Philip Roth " [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;$sessionid$FUVRY4DIEVBSTQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/arts/2003/04/27/bojac27.xml&sSheet=/arts/2003/04/27/bomain.html] although this is largely concerned with the fact that he is Jewish and has written comic novels. UnlikePhilip Roth though, his novels have retained their humour as he's got older. His most recent novel, "Kalooki Nights" (2006) he described as "the most Jewish novel that has ever been written by anybody, anywhere." [http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/articles/1730_howard_jacobson_talk.htm]As well as his fiction, he also writes 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" [ [http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2007/09/howard-jacobsons-intellectually-right.html Jews sans frontieres: Howard Jacobson's intellectually right zionism ] ] .He has also written a travel book, "In the Land of Oz", researched during his time as a visiting academic in Sydney and published in 1987.
Broadcasting
He has also worked as a broadcaster. Two recent television programmes include
Channel 4 's "Howard Jacobson Takes on the Turner", in 2000, and aSouth Bank Show special entitled "Why the Novel Matters" in 2002. In addition, his work has received an unusually high degree of exposure on television. He was the subject of aSouth Bank Show special in 1999 and a television documentary entitled "My Son the Novelist" in 1985. His two non-fiction books "Roots Schmoots: Journeys Among Jews" (1993), and "Seriously Funny: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime" (1997), were both bought and turned into television series.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;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, 1997References
External links
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;$sessionid$FUVRY4DIEVBSTQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/arts/2003/04/27/bojac27.xml&sSheet=/arts/2003/04/27/bomain.html Profile] of Jacobson in "The Daily Telegraph", 27 April 2003
* [http://www.open2.net/writing/howardjacobson.html Audio Writing Lab interview with Howard Jacobson] from "open2.net "
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.