Feh: A Memoir

by Shalom Auslander

Overview

From the acclaimed author of Foreskin’s Lament, a memoir of the author’s attempt to escape the biblical story he’d been raised on and his struggle to construct a new story for himself and his family

Shalom Auslander was raised like a veal in a dysfunctional family in the Orthodox community of Monsey, New York: the son of an alcoholic father; a guilt-wielding mother; and a violent, overbearing God. Now, as he reaches middle age, Auslander begins to suspect that what plagues him is something worse, something he can't so easily escape: a story. The story. One indelibly implanted in him at an early age, a story that told him he is fallen, broken, shameful, disgusting, a story we have all been told for thousands of years, and continue to be told by the religious and secular alike, a story called "Feh."

Yiddish for "Yuck."

Feh follows Auslander's midlife journey to rewrite that story, a journey that involves Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a Pulitzer-winning poet, Job, Arthur Schopenhauer, GHB, Wolf Blitzer, Yuval Noah Harari and a pastor named Steve in a now-defunct church in Los Angeles.

Can he move from Feh to merely meh? Can he even dream of moving beyond that?

Auslander's recounting of his attempt to exorcize the story he was raised with—before he implants it onto his children and/or possibly poisons the relationship of the one woman who loves him—isn’t sacred. It is more-than-occasionally profane. And like all his work, it is also relentlessly funny, subversively heartfelt and fearlessly provocative.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735213265
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/23/2024
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Shalom Auslander was raised in Monsey, New York. Nominated for the Koret Award for writers under thirty-five, he has published articles in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Tablet magazine, The New Yorker, and has had stories aired on NPR's This American Life. Auslander is the author of the short story collection Beware of God, the memoir Foreskin's Lament, and the novel Hope: A Tragedy. He is the creator of Showtime's Happyish. He lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

05/27/2024

Novelist Auslander (Mother for Dinner) delivers a poignant if scattered study of the religious guilt he incurred while growing up in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Rockland County, N.Y. Titled after the Yiddish word for disgust, the book hinges on Auslander’s attempts to shake the conviction, drilled into him from childhood, that human beings are “totally, irredeemably feh.” That sense of divine judgment, which plagued him through marital problems with his wife, Orli, financial struggles, and professional disappointments, culminated in a recent suicide attempt that Auslander dispassionately recounts near the beginning of the memoir. After he recovered, Auslander attempted to shed his fatalistic worldview on behalf of Orli and his two sons. In episodic chapters, he recounts trying to smile through Super Bowl parties, revisits guilty memories of watching porn as an adolescent, and talks with a Christian pastor in L.A. about God’s judgment. Though he never quite manages to come out the other side of his shame, he learns to coexist with it, and realizes that a “constant refrain of self-contempt and derision becomes self-fulfilling at some point.”Auslander’s gallows humor won’t be for everyone, and the account’s lack of resolution undercuts some of its impact, but the glimmer of hope coursing through the narrative keeps it alive. The result is an often-brutal, sometimes-rewarding journey out of the darkness. Agent: Jody Hotchkiss, Hotchkiss & Assoc. (July)

Publishers Weekly

06/01/2024

Showtime's Happyish creator and novelist/memoirist Auslander (Mother for Dinner) blends both a sense of despair and a self-deprecating whimsy in his latest memoir. It's an approach he handles tremendously well. Part personal history, part self-examination, and part social commentary, his book addresses everything from Kafka to capitalism. Replete with lessons in Yiddish terminology from his Orthodox Jewish childhood, his book covers the biblical story he learned as a child that he decided to reconstruct in his adulthood. He describes his family as dysfunctional and details his move from New York to Los Angeles. That journey includes a bunch of people, from the famous—Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Wolf Blitzer, for example—to names many readers won't recognize. Auslander's storytelling is neither direct nor straightforward. He cajoles readers to keep up as he skips from Torah tales to the present day, from people-pleasing self-hatred to inventive prose that provokes laughter. VERDICT A page-turning memoir that shouldn't be missed. Auslander's nonfiction writing style is often compared to David Sedaris, and readers will see why with this title. It could motivate readers to keep trudging onward, even when life seems overwhelming.—Jennifer Moore

Library Journal

2024-03-23
A poignant, often amusing memoir about how breaking free of the past and finding a new path is difficult but necessary.

“Feh” is a Yiddish word conveying disapproval or disgust, although a rougher translation is “yuck.” In this peculiar, intriguing memoir, Auslander, author of Foreskin’s Lament and Mother for Dinner, recounts it as an ongoing theme of his childhood and adolescence, a constant refrain from his alcoholic father and his neurotic mother that he was unworthy of affection, love, or even life. The author recounts how the teachers at his religious school reinforced the concept, implanting the idea of a God that was bitterly disappointed in all of humanity prone to random smiting and nasty tricks. Somehow, Auslander finds threads of dark comedy in this material, chronicling his efforts to overcome depression, self-loathing, and embedded guilt. He worries that he will inadvertently pass the poisonous seeds of self-destruction and vague hatred of the world to his beloved wife and children, although they turn out to be more resilient and capable than he expects. Despite stumbles into alcohol and drugs, the author gradually found success as a writer, and he punctuates the book with a range of microstories and outlines, some of which have a Kafkaesque quality—or they would, if Kafka had ever displayed a sense of fun. Auslander was drifting toward the edge of psychological disaster when, in the depth of the Covid-19 crisis, he encountered a series of everyday miracles that helped him find a way back. This isn’t a book for readers who don’t feel comfortable with the questioning of religious doctrine, but most readers will find a certain sense of inspiration in Auslander’s tragicomic struggle and his eventual, unlikely redemption.

A book full of droll humor and offbeat insights, a personal journey that speaks to deep parts of the human condition.

Kirkus Reviews