"Stern" by Bruce Jay Friedman

Humor's a funny thing. It's fickle, too. How it works on you can rely on so many identifiable factors and far more unidentifiable ones.

When I found STERN by Bruce Jay Friedman on a shelf in John K. King Used Books in Detroit, I was thrilled to come across a book that Time magazine described as "hugely comic" and the New York Times said was a "pure delight." I was ready to read something funny. I also loved the cover, which features a simple line drawing of a slope-shouldered man shuffling along under duress; the cartoonish style was appealing.

Stern opens with a prologue (though it's not so much a prologue as it is a chapter one) and it didn't immediately grab me. It seemed a bit ponderous ... and, ironically, not funny. Stern and his wife with their young son have just moved to the suburbs where the Jewish family is surrounded by threatening gentiles. When Stern's wife has a run-in with a neighbor who shoves her to the ground, calls her a "kike," and sees up her dress, Stern is traumatized. He is incapable of confronting the man who assaulted and insulted his wife and Stern's breakdown begins.

The remainder of the book details the decline of Stern's first physical and then mental health as he allows anxiety surrounding his bigoted neighbor, who he comes to think of as the "kike man," to consume him.

Stern's Jewish identity is central to his view on life and to the book's humor. It seemed to me that the book had two main running jokes: one, Stern's belief that being Jewish is terrible, and two, his routine rejection of taking an action for fear of getting his ass kicked; time and again, Stern thinks to say something or do something but refrains because he goes on to imagine how the person is likely to have a violent reaction and beat the living daylights out of him. It was funny the first couple of times, but then it became frustrating. I'm sure I also under-appreciated the humor rising out of Stern's self-loathing. That, too, I eventually found tedious.



There's also quite a bit of humor that rides on the back of racial and ethnic stereotypes that even though I understood it to be satirical I found it difficult to dredge up the comedy. Turns out I have a hard time finding funny any sentence that begins with "The Negro ..." I'm simply cringing too much to chuckle. Written in 1962, Stern, which was Friedman's first book, is a work of its time, as are most books, but I found it didn't perhaps age well.

There are occasions, however, when Friedman steps away from "Stern as a Jew" and translates his anxieties  and fears in broader terms outside of ethnicity. It's at those times that I most identified with Stern, sharing the worry that comes with the responsibility of protecting your family in a violent, unpredictable world. The world can be a frightening place. If you think about it too much, it could very well, as Stern learns, give you an ulcer ... or worse.

Bruce Jay Friedman

I had never heard of Friedman, but he had real success as a writer and was apparently good friends with Mario Puzo, the author of The Godfather. Friedman wrote seven other novels in addition to Stern  and several nonfiction pieces, including The Lonely Guy's Book of Life (1984), which was adapted into the Steven Martin film "The Lonely Guy." Friedman also wrote several screenplays, including "Doctor Detroit" and "Stir Crazy," and he earned an Oscar nomination for his work on "Splash." His memoir Lucky Bruce was published in 2011.

I found an interesting interview of him here.

So this book isn't for everyone, but then again, which book is? Hell, I even know some people who don't like Dr. Seuss. If you're interested in giving Friedman a whirl, drop me an email. His sense of humor may be right up your laugh track.