Several reviewers of Avner Landes's Meiselman: The Lean Years have had trouble reckoning with the novel's titular protagonist. One reviewer acknowledges the novel's effective humor, but suggests that the comedy arises because the protagonist is "a lot of fun to laugh at." Another suggests that Meiselman is "incapable of empathy or any other emotion aside from envy and resentment," making him a proto-MAGA guy," while yet another dismisses Meiselman as "an asshole with no redeeming qualities." This reviewer would prefer instead a "redemptive novel" featuring something other than an "utterly repellent everyman" as protagonist.
It is certainly the case that Meiselman, an "Events and Programs Coordinator" at a suburban Chicago library, is a profoundly flawed human being who has trouble empathizing with others and can only negotiate the world by attending closely to his own sense of well-being, but this really makes him a figure to pity rather than "laugh at" (when we're not wondering if there's a little bit of Meiselman in ourselves). And he is indeed often motivated by envy and resentment, but these feelings are really no more deeply experienced than any other of Meiselman's emotions--Meiselman seems to be most driven by a propensity to dwell on his most immediate sensations and most exigent impulses, especially after he determines that he has in fact spent too much time keeping himself in line and avoiding conflict. His emotional and intellectual superficiality may not be "redeemed" by a more healthy self-awareness at the novel's conclusion (although he does seem chastened by the "trauma" he has endured during the week in his life the novel chronicles), but this seems part of the novel's design: Meiselman's affliction does not seem to be of the sort that can be easily reversed through moral revelation; it seems likely Meiselman will continue muddling through in his own blinkered way.
In his unremitting libidinal urges, Meiselman might seem reminiscent of Philip Roth's obsessive protagonists, but he is much less determined to consummate those urges. His lusting is all in his head (except for an embarrassing interlude at his wife's bedside--literally--when according to custom she is supposed to be off-limits to him). He is both impulsive in scrutinizing his sexual desires and reluctant to indulge them. For several days he becomes preoccupied by a "pink-haired woman" (actually a high school student) he espies in the library, and to whom he is obviously attracted, but while he does scheme to be in her company, to help her out with a paper on Shakespeare she is writing, the scheming goes no farther than that, and she winds up pairing off with Meiselman's rival, Izzy Shenkenberg, a former classmate turned important writer, who has been invited to speak at the library by its director, Ethel Lewinson (also the object of Meiselman's erotic interest). Meiselman is sexually attracted to his wife, Deena, as well, but in this case he has reduced his sexual relations with her to a matter of ritual--every Sunday night--the anticipation of which actually makes him neurotic about it. By the novel's conclusion, Deena is on the verge of leaving him because she has started to find him creepy.
Finally, Meiselman seems more comparable to the protagonist of Bruce Jay Friedman's Stern, the loser who desperately wants to be a winner but hesitates to take strong action, worrying over his problems rather than seeking to resolve them. Meiselman advances toward what its protagonist conceives to be a confrontation between himself and Izzy Shenkenberg, who has written a novel that purportedly includes an unfavorable portrayal of a local rabbi. (Meiselman reads Izzy's book, but doesn't really pay close enough attention to say whether it's a fair criticism or not.) But in his capacity as moderator of the discussion with Shenkenberg, Meiselman mostly avoids confrontation, sticking instead to questions written by Ethel. For his more or less obedient behavior, Meiselman is rewarded at the end of the night by an announcement that Ethel has resigned her position as library director and that Meiselman, ostensibly in line for the job, has been passed over as her replacement. It is a humiliation Stern would appreciate.
But Friedman's character undergoes his travails as a clash between himself as a Jew and a suburban environment still laden with Anti-Semitism. Meiselman traverses an entirely Jewish domain, a Chicago suburb in which the Jews flourish. Stern is to an extent afraid for his life (however overwrought that fear might be); Meiselman feels disrespected within his own community (and by his own family). This makes for a different kind of humor, less "black" and not exactly satirical. If it were true that we are encouraged primarily to "laugh at" Meiselman, such laughter would indeed be cruel, since Meiselman cannot easily alter his behavior--he's a rebellious personality and a dutiful member of his community, and given the familial and cultural constraints to which he customarily defers, it's difficult to see how he would effectively untangle this knot of conflicting influences. Meiselman's behavior is often risible, but we are really laughing at this intrinsic predicament, of which Meiselman himself is only fitfully aware.
Perhaps we would feel more benignant toward Meiselman if he were narrating his own story, but it is told by a third-person narrator, who, although sticking closely to Meiselman's perspective and hewing closely to his thoughts and perceptions, approaches Meiselman's actions with a scrupulous detachment. Meiselman's state of mind is reported fully and accurately, even as these introspections can encourage an unflattering view of our protagonist. This technique contributes to the novel's complex comic tone, and helps to produce a character who, despite a kinship with preceding American Jewish protagonists, is really a singular creation.
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