![]() ![]() In a series of bravura feature articles, documentary films and three books (one of which, The Men Who Stare at Goats, has been made, counter-intuitively, into a major motion picture starring George Clooney), Ronson has comprehensively mapped the slapstick gavotte that the nebech and the shlemiel dance together – treading on each other's feet, tearing their clothes and cannoning into other couples on the dancefloor of life. ![]() ![]() I n Leo Rosten's unparalleled encyclopedia of the Jewish world-view, The Joy of Yiddish, he writes: "To define a nebech simply as an unlucky man is to miss the many nuances, from pity to contempt, the word affords." And then, as is always the way with Rosten – and Yiddish – he sharpens ones understanding illustratively: "A nebech is sometimes defined as the kind of person who always picks up what a shlemiel knocks over." To the non-Jewish reader this, of course, raises the question of what a shlemiel is – but you don't need to go out and buy a copy of Rosten in order to reach an understanding of this, you simply need to read the works of Jon Ronson. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |