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Un'altra occupazione
Israele, 2015. Veterani dell'ultima guerra di Gaza ad appena ventun anni, Yoav e Uri hanno terminato il servizio militare obbligatorio nelle forze militari israeliane. Durante il tradizionale anno di riposo e recupero decidono di trasferirsi a New York, dove cominciano a lavorare per un lontano cugino di Yoav: David King, ebreo, repubblicano per convenienza, orgoglioso patriota e titolare della ditta di traslochi King. I due amici faticano a ritrovare il passo della vita civile dopo gli orrori della guerra, anche perché il lavoro consiste principalmente nel buttare giù porte negli angoli più poveri del Bronx, di Brooklyn e del Queens, sbattere fuori casa gli inquilini morosi e confiscarne i beni. Difficile insomma per Yoav e Uri evitare una sinistra sovrapposizione tra il passato in Israele e il presente nella Grande Mela. E quella che comincia come un'attività tutto sommato innocua, anche se stranamente familiare (un'altra "occupazione"), si trasforma in una situazione carica di tensione, quando entra in scena un proprietario di casa in cerca di vendetta.
256 pages, Paperback
First published July 11, 2017
130 people are currently reading
1769 people want to read
About the author
Joshua Cohen
101 books589 followersJoshua Aaron Cohen (born September 6, 1980 in New Jersey) is an American novelist and writer of stories.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 156 reviews
July 6, 2017
Admit it: You picked up Joshua Cohen’s 800-page epic “Witz” but decided life was too short. A few years later, you thought maybe you’d tackle his 600-page “Book of Numbers,” but a novel by the New York novelist Joshua Cohen about a New York novelist named Joshua Cohen sounded like a postmodern migraine.
Now you’re out of excuses. Granta recently named Cohen one of the best young American novelists, and his new book, “Moving Kings,” is a svelte comic triumph that concentrates his genius. Here, in a story inflected by verbal dexterity but not overwhelmed by it, Cohen explores themes of power and Jewish identity with the same insight that has justly attracted praise from some of the country’s most sophisticated writers.
“Ye shall know them by their vehicles,” he begins with mock-Biblical solemnity. These vehicles are trucks that belong to David King, president of King’s Moving, known throughout the New York metropolitan area for its corny TV commercials. Sadly, the success of David’s business life belies the failure of his personal life. His wife has left him after a vicious divorce, and despite giving his college-age daughter everything, including a brownstone in Crown Heights, she’s a spoiled wreck. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
Now you’re out of excuses. Granta recently named Cohen one of the best young American novelists, and his new book, “Moving Kings,” is a svelte comic triumph that concentrates his genius. Here, in a story inflected by verbal dexterity but not overwhelmed by it, Cohen explores themes of power and Jewish identity with the same insight that has justly attracted praise from some of the country’s most sophisticated writers.
“Ye shall know them by their vehicles,” he begins with mock-Biblical solemnity. These vehicles are trucks that belong to David King, president of King’s Moving, known throughout the New York metropolitan area for its corny TV commercials. Sadly, the success of David’s business life belies the failure of his personal life. His wife has left him after a vicious divorce, and despite giving his college-age daughter everything, including a brownstone in Crown Heights, she’s a spoiled wreck. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
June 8, 2019
Joshua Cohen's two previous novels had been the 824 page Witz and the 592 page Book of Numbers, both critically acclaimed. I haven't read either, but Moving Kings, at 256 pages, rather suggests he may have been better sticking with the longer, more ambitious works, since as a more conventional novel, in length and form, this was for me a complete failure.
The first third of the novel introduces us to David King (like King David - geddit?!) owner of a New York based moving business:
King’s Moving (David King, President, Spokesman, Container of Crises, Stresses, & the Distrained) was a licensed, bonded, limited-liability insured large small business that specialized in—one guess—moving … ’n’ storage … ’n’ parking … ’n’ towing … ’n’ salvage … ’n’ scrap, activities that demanded the bloodsweat of plus/minus 40 fulltime and 60 parttime employees, 50 vehicles, three lots, five garages, six 24-hour, security-monitored, climate-controlled storage facilities conveniently located throughout the New York Metropolitan Area—not to mention a headquarters in Jersey City, hard by the piers.
King then seems to be completely forgotten as a character for much of the rest of the book, which focuses instead on a younger distant cousin and his colleague who, having completed their compulsory military service in the IDF, take the traditional 1 year for rest and recuperation, and decide to come to the US, where King is persuaded to house them and find them a role in his firm.
Ill-suited by lack of training to the more delicate act of moving people's precious possessions, they instead get involved in one of the less high-profile, but more lucrative, parts of the King's Moving business, evictions and repossessions. The book's none too subtle underlying premise is that the work they end up doing isn't that different to what they did in the IDF, which is spelled out in detail in case the reader misses the point.
Back under the Occupation, there had been shooting and here in America there was no shooting, or none aimed at them. Back under the Occupation, there had been sleepless stretches with nothing to eat and nothing to drink and here in America there were scheduled breaks and just a staggering range of fastfood options for both takeout and delivery. Also, in the IDF they’d been able to smash things. If they bumped into a Palestinian chair or desk or even a human intact, they could smash it, they could call in a convoy of Doobi D9s to dismantle and raze, or a formation of F16s to fly in and cave the roofs and blast the walls into sand and sprinkle the foundations with phosphorous – but here in New York, they had to salvage.
Otherwise, the work they were doing wasn’t too different.
They were still going into a house and checking the rooms by the floor. Checking for people, checking for possessions. Clearing the people before clearing the possessions.
Disappointing and an odd inclusion in the Fitzcarraldo Editions catalogue.
The first third of the novel introduces us to David King (like King David - geddit?!) owner of a New York based moving business:
King’s Moving (David King, President, Spokesman, Container of Crises, Stresses, & the Distrained) was a licensed, bonded, limited-liability insured large small business that specialized in—one guess—moving … ’n’ storage … ’n’ parking … ’n’ towing … ’n’ salvage … ’n’ scrap, activities that demanded the bloodsweat of plus/minus 40 fulltime and 60 parttime employees, 50 vehicles, three lots, five garages, six 24-hour, security-monitored, climate-controlled storage facilities conveniently located throughout the New York Metropolitan Area—not to mention a headquarters in Jersey City, hard by the piers.
King then seems to be completely forgotten as a character for much of the rest of the book, which focuses instead on a younger distant cousin and his colleague who, having completed their compulsory military service in the IDF, take the traditional 1 year for rest and recuperation, and decide to come to the US, where King is persuaded to house them and find them a role in his firm.
Ill-suited by lack of training to the more delicate act of moving people's precious possessions, they instead get involved in one of the less high-profile, but more lucrative, parts of the King's Moving business, evictions and repossessions. The book's none too subtle underlying premise is that the work they end up doing isn't that different to what they did in the IDF, which is spelled out in detail in case the reader misses the point.
Back under the Occupation, there had been shooting and here in America there was no shooting, or none aimed at them. Back under the Occupation, there had been sleepless stretches with nothing to eat and nothing to drink and here in America there were scheduled breaks and just a staggering range of fastfood options for both takeout and delivery. Also, in the IDF they’d been able to smash things. If they bumped into a Palestinian chair or desk or even a human intact, they could smash it, they could call in a convoy of Doobi D9s to dismantle and raze, or a formation of F16s to fly in and cave the roofs and blast the walls into sand and sprinkle the foundations with phosphorous – but here in New York, they had to salvage.
Otherwise, the work they were doing wasn’t too different.
They were still going into a house and checking the rooms by the floor. Checking for people, checking for possessions. Clearing the people before clearing the possessions.
Disappointing and an odd inclusion in the Fitzcarraldo Editions catalogue.
April 23, 2017
Moving Kings is shorter and more accessible than Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers and Four New Messages. It’s well written and caustic, dealing with Big Issues such as social and religious strivings and the meaning of being Jewish. As someone of Jewish descent, I should have liked it more than I did; often, I found myself wondering how those who didn’t grow up with the Jewish experience would relate.
The title – Moving Kings – refers to David King, an American Jew who inherited his father’s furniture-moving business and whose life is – well, rather a mess, with an ill-advised affair with his office manager (leading to a divorce), a messed up daughter fresh out of rehab, and a need to somehow impress the rich Republican WASPS.
Soon we meet the second main character, Yoav, King’s young Israeli cousin, who has just completed his compulsory service in the U.S. army and, for lack of anything else to do, ends up crossing the ocean and working for David. The third part of this troika is a Vietnam veteran named Avery Luter, who is about to get evicted from his foreclosed home by the King movers.
The book has a lot to say: the loose ties of family, the transference of those family bonds to the army or to business, the quest to find something to prove, the battlefields that exist within us and outside of us. It’s about the difficulty of living a true Jewish life when there’s nothing tangible to fight for. On a political level, it’s about repossessing what is not ours to take and the continual struggle to let ourselves be seen.
But most of all, it’s about moving, literally and figuratively: moving from army service to civilian life, moving from childhood to maturity, moving through those ever-present states of internal and external combat, striving to move forward when the world is turning backwards. It spoke to my head but not so much to my heart.
The title – Moving Kings – refers to David King, an American Jew who inherited his father’s furniture-moving business and whose life is – well, rather a mess, with an ill-advised affair with his office manager (leading to a divorce), a messed up daughter fresh out of rehab, and a need to somehow impress the rich Republican WASPS.
Soon we meet the second main character, Yoav, King’s young Israeli cousin, who has just completed his compulsory service in the U.S. army and, for lack of anything else to do, ends up crossing the ocean and working for David. The third part of this troika is a Vietnam veteran named Avery Luter, who is about to get evicted from his foreclosed home by the King movers.
The book has a lot to say: the loose ties of family, the transference of those family bonds to the army or to business, the quest to find something to prove, the battlefields that exist within us and outside of us. It’s about the difficulty of living a true Jewish life when there’s nothing tangible to fight for. On a political level, it’s about repossessing what is not ours to take and the continual struggle to let ourselves be seen.
But most of all, it’s about moving, literally and figuratively: moving from army service to civilian life, moving from childhood to maturity, moving through those ever-present states of internal and external combat, striving to move forward when the world is turning backwards. It spoke to my head but not so much to my heart.
February 6, 2020
This year Granta named Joshua Cohen one of their Best of Young American Novelists. His previous works include Book of Numbers and Four New Messages. His reputation is for writing long and rather dense fiction that prioritizes Jewish themes. To my relief, though, Moving Kings is a short and often engaging book that alternates between New York City and Israel to tell of characters looking for, or jealously guarding, a sense of home and belonging.
Set in 2015, the novel opens with David King of King’s Moving Inc. schmoozing at a July Fourth weekend dinner ($4,000/plate) in the Hamptons that’s being held to raise funds for a Republican senatorial candidate. Impossible not to imagine this character as a modern-day King David, and equally impossible to ignore just how odious he seems: he’s a casual racist, has an ex-wife thanks to his affair with his office manager, sports hair implants and capped teeth that speak of his vanity, and has a dodgy habit of secreting cash assets in Tel Aviv.
The opulence of David’s lifestyle is in stark contrast with the difficult conditions in which so many of his clients live. His warehouse full of repossessed belongings is a testament to desperation, as is a later letter in which a widow whose apartment has been repossessed begs the bank to get her late husband’s watch back for her so she can give it to her son one day.
After David’s twenty-two-year-old cousin Yoav finishes his mandatory military service in Israel, David agrees to let him come to New York and work for King’s. Yoav’s fellow soldier Uri, who’s having a harder time adjusting to civilian life, joins him and they specialize in evictions and seizure of possessions in tough neighborhoods. Things come to a head when a Vietnam veteran who has defaulted on his mortgage payments refuses to leave his home.
The way the book shifts decisively to focus on Yoav at about the one-third point made me a little disoriented, given how invested I’d become in David’s story. Although Cohen writes evocatively about the Israeli terrain in the flashbacks to David’s first visit there and to Yoav and Uri’s service, I enjoyed the book less and less as it went on.
However, Cohen’s distinctive prose makes the reading experience worthwhile: it’s full of random, witty observations and his own made-up compound words. I especially liked “Everything in the desert became like the desert—everything dusted a caffeine brown spread by tiretread into blackness” and “rubbleshouldered Route 1 rose into eyesquint and earpop.”
I could see this book appealing to readers who have enjoyed novels about the American Jewish experience that also journey to Israel, such as Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer. I was also reminded a bit of David Grossman’s recent A Horse Walks into a Bar. Ultimately, the plot didn’t coalesce for me, but Cohen’s writing is so striking that I’m likely to try more of his work in the future.
Set in 2015, the novel opens with David King of King’s Moving Inc. schmoozing at a July Fourth weekend dinner ($4,000/plate) in the Hamptons that’s being held to raise funds for a Republican senatorial candidate. Impossible not to imagine this character as a modern-day King David, and equally impossible to ignore just how odious he seems: he’s a casual racist, has an ex-wife thanks to his affair with his office manager, sports hair implants and capped teeth that speak of his vanity, and has a dodgy habit of secreting cash assets in Tel Aviv.
The opulence of David’s lifestyle is in stark contrast with the difficult conditions in which so many of his clients live. His warehouse full of repossessed belongings is a testament to desperation, as is a later letter in which a widow whose apartment has been repossessed begs the bank to get her late husband’s watch back for her so she can give it to her son one day.
After David’s twenty-two-year-old cousin Yoav finishes his mandatory military service in Israel, David agrees to let him come to New York and work for King’s. Yoav’s fellow soldier Uri, who’s having a harder time adjusting to civilian life, joins him and they specialize in evictions and seizure of possessions in tough neighborhoods. Things come to a head when a Vietnam veteran who has defaulted on his mortgage payments refuses to leave his home.
The way the book shifts decisively to focus on Yoav at about the one-third point made me a little disoriented, given how invested I’d become in David’s story. Although Cohen writes evocatively about the Israeli terrain in the flashbacks to David’s first visit there and to Yoav and Uri’s service, I enjoyed the book less and less as it went on.
However, Cohen’s distinctive prose makes the reading experience worthwhile: it’s full of random, witty observations and his own made-up compound words. I especially liked “Everything in the desert became like the desert—everything dusted a caffeine brown spread by tiretread into blackness” and “rubbleshouldered Route 1 rose into eyesquint and earpop.”
I could see this book appealing to readers who have enjoyed novels about the American Jewish experience that also journey to Israel, such as Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer. I was also reminded a bit of David Grossman’s recent A Horse Walks into a Bar. Ultimately, the plot didn’t coalesce for me, but Cohen’s writing is so striking that I’m likely to try more of his work in the future.
October 15, 2017
Good story about the owner of a moving/storage business and his distant Israeli cousin and his friend who have just finished serving in the Israeli army and are now working for him. Copy obtained via a Goodreads giveaway. I really liked this book.
March 16, 2019
When Cohen reins in his wild verbivoracity, the results are not as explosive. When Cohen tries to wed a middlebrow novel seeking a film adaptation with a freewheeling linguistic beast, the results are a little muddled and annoying.
July 2, 2021
The only problem is that Joshua Cohen is the heir to DFW's cleverness, and seems--while fully capable--content to produce decent books instead of masterpieces.
April 20, 2017
I'm the first person reviewing this and can't help but wish I liked it more. I usually enjoy immigrant experience/New York stories, but this tale of two young Israeli men fresh out of the army service who come to the US and work for a relocation company just didn't sing for me at all. it's a fairly quiet story right up until it's explosive ending and, while there is a way to write interestingly about the mundane, Cohen doesn't really do that here, The writing, though perfectly competent and serviceable, comes across relentlessly bleak, distant and utterly unengaging. These are theoretically compelling stories about real (well book real, so realistic) lives and experiences, but it's very difficult to care about any of them as a reader. Either these characters weren't meant to be particularly likeable (and there is a way to write about unlikeable characters interestingly too and this isn't it) or it's just the lifeless monotone of narration, but this book just failed to charm or excite. It was considerately quick enough of a read, but didn't offer much in return for reader's time. In fact, notably stolid for a title with locomotion in it. Thanks Netgalley.
August 22, 2017
Moving Kings is my second Joshua Cohen novel, after Book of Numbers.
A very different book, simpler, and a good one to ascertain if Cohen deserves the succession of plaudits proclaiming his youthful excellence.
Moving Kings is about Jewish religious observance and of Jewish family life and contradictions; it's about the State of Israel. It's also about repossession teams in New York and the realities of existence when/ if life turns sour.
Cohen's writing demands/ expects the reader to be tuned into the language of the street, the army, religious belief and custom,work colleagues.
The characters in the book are coarse, raw, unrefined, moulded by the toughness of the city and separately, by their army experiences.
The brevity of Moving Kings (compared to previous Cohen work) is not a bad thing. The plot of the book and its denouement are straightforward, and the reader has greater opportunity to dwell on the exceptional, clever passages where individual characters are opened up.
The various disparate themes are brought together and merged to a convincing conclusion.
The best way to describe a book of this sort is to quote Cohen's words on the main characters:
URI
you can't stop being a soldier, just like you can't stop being a Jew. They're both permanent conditions for life. Did you know that at age 18, you were called to become another thing, a bar pekudah- a son of the commands(115)
AVERY LUTER/ IMAMU NABI
The consequences of foreclosure:
He slept by day so as to stay awake all night and use the cover of darkness for his errands. Pulling behind him a shopping cart. Under the plundered light of the moon. His home had become the A line, which plunged subterranean between the stops at 80th and Grant(239)
DAVID KING
Of Ex wife Bonnie
David was facing a summer laid out in front of him like a scorched brittle lawn. He was facing a divorce and an attempt to invalidate the prenup(29)
Of daughter Tammy
Tammy was in touch with David only if she'd depleted her monthly allowance and needed cash and so she was in touch with him every month (53)
Joshua Cohen uses language, and describes people's personal battles, that is very much appropriate to the twenty first century.
It's the sort of writing it's good to experience from time to time as a contrast to those books where the beauty of the prose is the end in itself.
A very different book, simpler, and a good one to ascertain if Cohen deserves the succession of plaudits proclaiming his youthful excellence.
Moving Kings is about Jewish religious observance and of Jewish family life and contradictions; it's about the State of Israel. It's also about repossession teams in New York and the realities of existence when/ if life turns sour.
Cohen's writing demands/ expects the reader to be tuned into the language of the street, the army, religious belief and custom,work colleagues.
The characters in the book are coarse, raw, unrefined, moulded by the toughness of the city and separately, by their army experiences.
The brevity of Moving Kings (compared to previous Cohen work) is not a bad thing. The plot of the book and its denouement are straightforward, and the reader has greater opportunity to dwell on the exceptional, clever passages where individual characters are opened up.
The various disparate themes are brought together and merged to a convincing conclusion.
The best way to describe a book of this sort is to quote Cohen's words on the main characters:
URI
you can't stop being a soldier, just like you can't stop being a Jew. They're both permanent conditions for life. Did you know that at age 18, you were called to become another thing, a bar pekudah- a son of the commands(115)
AVERY LUTER/ IMAMU NABI
The consequences of foreclosure:
He slept by day so as to stay awake all night and use the cover of darkness for his errands. Pulling behind him a shopping cart. Under the plundered light of the moon. His home had become the A line, which plunged subterranean between the stops at 80th and Grant(239)
DAVID KING
Of Ex wife Bonnie
David was facing a summer laid out in front of him like a scorched brittle lawn. He was facing a divorce and an attempt to invalidate the prenup(29)
Of daughter Tammy
Tammy was in touch with David only if she'd depleted her monthly allowance and needed cash and so she was in touch with him every month (53)
Joshua Cohen uses language, and describes people's personal battles, that is very much appropriate to the twenty first century.
It's the sort of writing it's good to experience from time to time as a contrast to those books where the beauty of the prose is the end in itself.
September 1, 2017
I read this book for two main reasons. Firstly Granta recently included an excerpt from the book in Granta 139: Best of Young American Novelists 3 and I thought it was one of the better pieces in that collection. Secondly, Amazon put the Kindle version of the complete book on sale for a ridiculously low price (it’s still less than £5 as I write this).
This is my first experience of Cohen. I haven’t read either of his previous two novels which I understand are longer and perhaps less penetrable. This one is relatively straightforward: the plot is not complicated and there aren’t many characters. The language does take some getting used to. In particular, Cohen seems very fond of creating words by mashing two others together (vinylsiding, gorillalimbed, wetsplotched, librarianlike, parchmentcolored, drawerandcabinetstuff, backgroundchecked - a few examples picked from a much longer list). He also assumes some knowledge of both street talk and Jewish idioms, which was a bit of challenge to me who has no real knowledge of either (maybe a bit on the Jewish side of things from other books I’ve read). Cohen also gets credit for being the only author I know of who has ever used the word purpurogenous (my spell checker underlines this, but, after a bit of research, I discovered it is a real word).
With the word mashing, I am not sure whether Cohen is having a bit of a laugh at himself or whether it is purely accidental that one of his characters shouts out “You’re not making sense—you’re conflating.”
Once you get used to the conflating, it is actually rather refreshing to read something a bit different to the norm. At times, there’s something a bit Pynchonesque about Cohen’s writing.
The story isn’t complicated. Missing out a lot of detail, what we essentially have is a story of David King who runs a removals business in America - his life is complicated due to an affair, a divorce and a difficult daughter. He has a cousin, Yoav who, on completing his Israeli military service ends up working for King in America and, not long after, is joined by one of his squad mates, Uri. Part of King’s removals business often involves “removing” the people in the properties. Things come to a head when they try to evict one Avery Luter, an America vet (as in veteran, not animal doctor!).
I have mixed feelings about the book overall. As already mentioned, I found the writing, once I got used to, enjoyable. But a lot of the plot seems to hinge on us accepting that Israeli soldiers house-clearing in Gaza is similar to American removal teams evicting people from their houses in New York, and I’m not sure that that is a comparison that sits comfortably with me. And Avery Luter, who is key to moving the plot to its dramatic conclusion, didn’t feel to me like a well-drawn character. I wonder if perhaps it was the author’s intention to keep him shadowy and partially obscured - that would fit with the story - but somehow it made the ending, when it came, feel a bit rushed.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this, but I am not sure it has made me want to pick up one of Cohen’s other books. The fact that I am looking at what I have written and noticing that I have missed out a lot of things says something about the content of the book - it does take a good look at Jewishness, at America, at faith. It does show us some individuals who are pushed away from their home and then become the ones pushing others out of their homes. But, for me, it didn’t quite gel.
This is my first experience of Cohen. I haven’t read either of his previous two novels which I understand are longer and perhaps less penetrable. This one is relatively straightforward: the plot is not complicated and there aren’t many characters. The language does take some getting used to. In particular, Cohen seems very fond of creating words by mashing two others together (vinylsiding, gorillalimbed, wetsplotched, librarianlike, parchmentcolored, drawerandcabinetstuff, backgroundchecked - a few examples picked from a much longer list). He also assumes some knowledge of both street talk and Jewish idioms, which was a bit of challenge to me who has no real knowledge of either (maybe a bit on the Jewish side of things from other books I’ve read). Cohen also gets credit for being the only author I know of who has ever used the word purpurogenous (my spell checker underlines this, but, after a bit of research, I discovered it is a real word).
With the word mashing, I am not sure whether Cohen is having a bit of a laugh at himself or whether it is purely accidental that one of his characters shouts out “You’re not making sense—you’re conflating.”
Once you get used to the conflating, it is actually rather refreshing to read something a bit different to the norm. At times, there’s something a bit Pynchonesque about Cohen’s writing.
The story isn’t complicated. Missing out a lot of detail, what we essentially have is a story of David King who runs a removals business in America - his life is complicated due to an affair, a divorce and a difficult daughter. He has a cousin, Yoav who, on completing his Israeli military service ends up working for King in America and, not long after, is joined by one of his squad mates, Uri. Part of King’s removals business often involves “removing” the people in the properties. Things come to a head when they try to evict one Avery Luter, an America vet (as in veteran, not animal doctor!).
I have mixed feelings about the book overall. As already mentioned, I found the writing, once I got used to, enjoyable. But a lot of the plot seems to hinge on us accepting that Israeli soldiers house-clearing in Gaza is similar to American removal teams evicting people from their houses in New York, and I’m not sure that that is a comparison that sits comfortably with me. And Avery Luter, who is key to moving the plot to its dramatic conclusion, didn’t feel to me like a well-drawn character. I wonder if perhaps it was the author’s intention to keep him shadowy and partially obscured - that would fit with the story - but somehow it made the ending, when it came, feel a bit rushed.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this, but I am not sure it has made me want to pick up one of Cohen’s other books. The fact that I am looking at what I have written and noticing that I have missed out a lot of things says something about the content of the book - it does take a good look at Jewishness, at America, at faith. It does show us some individuals who are pushed away from their home and then become the ones pushing others out of their homes. But, for me, it didn’t quite gel.
November 23, 2022
Ο Ντέιβιντ Κινγκ, έχει μια εταιρεία μεταφορών την οποία δοικεί με πυγμή, σε αντίθεση με την προσωπική του ζωή. Έχοντας ένα διαζύγιο στην πλάτη του και μια ιδιαίτερα περίεργη σχέση με την κόρη του, προσπαθεί να αποδείξει ότι ζει το American Dream που του αναλογεί, όντας εβραϊκής καταγωγής. Με τους συγγενείς του στο Ισραήλ δεν έχει ιδιαίτερες σχέσεις ώσπου ενημερώνεται ότι ο ανιψιός του Γιόαβ, έχοντας αποστρατευτει, έρχεται στην Αμερική. Όμως, εκτός από τον Γιόαβ, στην Αμερική έρχεται κι ένας συφάνταρος του, ο Ούρι και απασχολούνται κι οι δυό στην μεταφορική του Ντέιβιντ. Ανάμεσα στις αρμοδιότητες τους, είναι να βγάζουν από τα κτίρια όσους τους έχει γίνει έξωση.
Η πλοκή του συγκεκριμμένου βιβλίου δεν έχει κάτι το ιδιαίτερο. Αυτό που θέλει να αναδείξει ο Cohenείναι ο ρατσισμός που επικρατεί στην Αμερική, σε όλες τις εκφάνσεις του. Για τους Αμερικανούς, οι Ισραηλινοί είναι Άραβες εκτός από Εβραίοι για παράδειγμα. Υπάρχουν ορθόδοξοι Εβραίοι στην Αμερική, ή μόνο όσοι έχουν μεγαλώσει στο Ισραήλ είναι? Οι συνεχείς διαμάχες στη λωρίδα της Γάζας, δεν μπορούν να συγκριθούν σε καμία περίπτωση με τον Πόλεμο του Βιετνάμ, ας πούμε. Οι Αφροαμερικανοί, είναι καλοί ως φαντάροι, αλλά όχι αρκετά καλοί για υψηλότερες θέσεις. Χρησιμοποιώντας παραλληλισμούς και συμβολισμούς, Ντέιβιντ Κινγκ - Βασιλιάς Δαυίδ, έξωση-κατοχή, βάζει τους ήρωες του να αμφισβητήσουν αυτό που τους ξεχωρίζει, την ταυτότητά τους.
Από τους συγγραφείς του 21ου αιώνα που ήρθαν να ταράξουν τα νερά με τον λόγο τους. Θα ήθελα να διαβάσω και κάτι άλλο δικό του.
"Το στήριγμα του στη διάρκεια όλης αυτής της διαδικασίας ήταν το Ισραήλ: το ιδεώδες που αντιπροσώπευε, η αφηρημένη ιδέα - αν είχες συγγενείς σ'αυτή τη χώρα σήμαινε ότι είχες και τη χώρα για συγγενή, ολόκληρη τη χώρα."
Η πλοκή του συγκεκριμμένου βιβλίου δεν έχει κάτι το ιδιαίτερο. Αυτό που θέλει να αναδείξει ο Cohenείναι ο ρατσισμός που επικρατεί στην Αμερική, σε όλες τις εκφάνσεις του. Για τους Αμερικανούς, οι Ισραηλινοί είναι Άραβες εκτός από Εβραίοι για παράδειγμα. Υπάρχουν ορθόδοξοι Εβραίοι στην Αμερική, ή μόνο όσοι έχουν μεγαλώσει στο Ισραήλ είναι? Οι συνεχείς διαμάχες στη λωρίδα της Γάζας, δεν μπορούν να συγκριθούν σε καμία περίπτωση με τον Πόλεμο του Βιετνάμ, ας πούμε. Οι Αφροαμερικανοί, είναι καλοί ως φαντάροι, αλλά όχι αρκετά καλοί για υψηλότερες θέσεις. Χρησιμοποιώντας παραλληλισμούς και συμβολισμούς, Ντέιβιντ Κινγκ - Βασιλιάς Δαυίδ, έξωση-κατοχή, βάζει τους ήρωες του να αμφισβητήσουν αυτό που τους ξεχωρίζει, την ταυτότητά τους.
Από τους συγγραφείς του 21ου αιώνα που ήρθαν να ταράξουν τα νερά με τον λόγο τους. Θα ήθελα να διαβάσω και κάτι άλλο δικό του.
"Το στήριγμα του στη διάρκεια όλης αυτής της διαδικασίας ήταν το Ισραήλ: το ιδεώδες που αντιπροσώπευε, η αφηρημένη ιδέα - αν είχες συγγενείς σ'αυτή τη χώρα σήμαινε ότι είχες και τη χώρα για συγγενή, ολόκληρη τη χώρα."
August 6, 2017
Moving Kings is like a more palatable, less brilliant version of Cohen's Book of Numbers. It's shorter, and not nearly as offensive or frustrating; but nor is it as ambitious, audacious, or freewheeling. It could, kind of, be an interlinked collection of short stories focusing on a loose knot of characters that includes removals mogul David King; his distant cousin Yoav, late of a compulsory stint in the Isareli army; Yoav's tinderbox squadmate Uri; and, tangentially but critically, an addled Vietnam vet whose dilapidated Bronx home the King's crew come to clear. These little dives into their consciousness probe the Jewish experience, the immigrant experience, the male experience. It isn't the staggering trip that Book of Numbers was but there are still some delicious sentences. Even when Cohen uses typical litfic-speak he somehow elevates it: 'past the natural gas plant's twinkling, the pressure vessels rose like foreign moons roiling with oil'. While Moving Kings is unlikely to make my end-of-year favourites list, it has consolidated my resolution to (eventually and probably rather slowly) make my way through Cohen's back catalogue.
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January 14, 2022What MJ said. But if you've written a mad brick like Witz I'll prolly sign up for to Completionize you.
June 16, 2021
Lo curioso de leer la prensa cultural es que cada poco tiempo, más o menos cada temporada, llega un nuevo mesías, un nuevo genio de las letras que viene a culminar la tradición literaria y transportarnos a las más altas cotas de la lectura, experiencias definitivas con las que embriagarse de conocimiento, diversión y otras hierbas. Hasta el próximo advenimiento. De tanto repetir esta maniobra a veces te cuelan chucherías inanes como Jonathan Safran Foer pero en otras, por cuestión de probabilidad, también deben acertar y presentar a escritores con talla.
Ése es el caso de Joshua Cohen. Por su aspecto parece un primo norteamericano de Iñigo Errejón y en verdad es un narrador excelso. O por lo menos así ocurre en este libro, el único que he leído del autor. Construye una voz irónica y que sin embargo habla con aplomo de todo el material que aborda, da igual que sea el como constituir un negocio de crecimiento voraz e inmisericorde (que termina abarcando también embargos) como la vida dentro del ejército israelí. Un narrador con sumo ingenio, con una mirada punzante capaz de hallar conexiones entre el capitalismo depredador norteamericano y las políticas expansionistas de Israel.
Como bien comentó Cohen en alguna entrevista, su libro no es ni pro-palestino ni pro-israelí, el dogmatismo se lo dejaremos para los columnistas que reciben paguita de grupos de presión, si bien es cierto que Cohen mira con desconfianza toda esa militarización hiperbólica que vive la región.
Los reyes de la mudanza nos habla por un lado de David King, un judío norteamericano que dirige un próspero negocio de mudanzas y por otro de Uri y Yoav, dos israelís que ejercen como puentes de esas dos esferas, ambas constituidas en rodillos de sectores vulnerables. Después de haber cumplido con el servicio militar obligatorio, como por lo visto hacen muchos jóvenes tras cumplir con ese deber, realizan un viaje, salen al mundo para descomprimir y rápidamente desentenderse de ese país que han estado defendiendo. Se da la circunstancia que David tiene parientes en Israel y es así como por esta conexión termina empleando a los dos jóvenes, que se suben a los camiones de la empresa en busca de las pertenencias de sus clientes.
Durante la novela Cohen establece las diferentes conexiones que existen entre los dos mundos, que de una forma muy simplificada se podría decir que se dedican a monetizar los grandes conflictos de sus respectivas sociedades (en un caso la crisis inmobiliaria derivada de la crisis económica de 2008 y en el otro el conflicto territorial con las poblaciones musulmanas) para expandirse, multiplicar sus riquezas y crecer a expensas de gente que sólo se puede defender ejerciendo una violencia directa con los ejecutores del poder, que en verdad no son los que idean sus problemas.
En algún punto se nos habla por ejemplo que David pueda disponer de ciertos capitales en el país mediterráneo y que al traspasarlos a Estados Unidos, simulando un préstamo, pueda volver a recobrarlos sin por ello pagar los debidos impuestos. Cuando David desea recuperar parte de ese dinero y acude al banco, aprovechando que en ese momento hay abierto otra batalla con los palestinos y hay que financiarla, en la entidad convencen a David no sólo para que no saque su dinero, si no para que aumente su depósito, si bien el rico empresario no se propone apoyar ninguna guerra de ningún tipo.
Este votante republicano además ha hecho crecer su empresa de mudanzas hasta disponer de bienes embargados, a veces con políticas empresariales algo torticeras, y encargarse también de desahucios de inmuebles de personas que no pueden afrontar pagos, de forma que al final Uri y Yoav ejercen actividades similares en los dos países, como peones de los poderosos contra los débiles, actividades que si están bien no les serán reconocidas y que si están mal, no son responsables. En todo caso, estos entornos les sumerge en un marcos mentales y una mentalidad que se reproduce en casi todos los estamentos de la sociedad, da igual que sea el ejército, la familia, la sociedad o la vida laboral, exagerando en ocasiones sus contradicciones internas y agrandando disgustos que no siempre están claros.
Claro que no todo es etéreo o elíptico. Cuando aborda el periplo de Uri dentro del ejército, viéndose el soldado saturado por diferentes sueños extraños, es aconsejado por cierto rabino que lo atiende y mediante palabras de la Torá le hacen ver que de la misma forma que tras el Bar Mitzvá no se deja de ser judío, cuando abandona el ejército no se abandona la guerra, la prédica religiosa puesta al servicio del dogmatismo estatal, sembrando la semilla de una ansiedad que se supone debe perdurar de forma indefinida, multiplicando el descontento, el extrañamiento y que al final de la novela termina eclosionando.
A Cohen se le ha llegado a comparar con David Foster Wallace, comparación que a mi juicio no resulta acertada dado que Wallace tiene bastante de literatura de empollones y hasta cierto punto es grandilocuente, imponiéndose ciertos grandes deberes de enmendar la sociedad desde la literatura. Cohen no cae en esos maximalismos, en verdad huye de todos esos grandes deberes auto-impuestos, consciente interrogar un tema es mejor hacerlo sin recetas, sin exagerar tensiones y constricciones que muchas veces son más útiles al ego del autor que no al valor del libro de turno.
La escritura de Cohen transmite cierto aire de desenfadado, es sumamente legible, aunque no por eso es liviana, en el fondo del texto se perciben inquietudes serias y que desea indagar en lo que abarcan las problemáticas sociales y el sentido de ciertas palabras, principalmente las relacionadas con con la identidad judía del autor. Su escritura es tan sumamente entretenida que me llegó a recordar a esas primeras lecturas de Jonathan Lethem, también capaz de hablar de temas dispares con soltura y gracia, capaz tanto de entretener como de reflexionar al mismo tiempo, y buscar llamativos detalles en la realidad sin necesidad de recurrir a tópicos que rebajen la lectura a una inofensiva mercadería cultural. Un artefacto que da la sensación que si no lo hubiese urdido el autor, nadie más hubiese podido.
Ése es el caso de Joshua Cohen. Por su aspecto parece un primo norteamericano de Iñigo Errejón y en verdad es un narrador excelso. O por lo menos así ocurre en este libro, el único que he leído del autor. Construye una voz irónica y que sin embargo habla con aplomo de todo el material que aborda, da igual que sea el como constituir un negocio de crecimiento voraz e inmisericorde (que termina abarcando también embargos) como la vida dentro del ejército israelí. Un narrador con sumo ingenio, con una mirada punzante capaz de hallar conexiones entre el capitalismo depredador norteamericano y las políticas expansionistas de Israel.
Como bien comentó Cohen en alguna entrevista, su libro no es ni pro-palestino ni pro-israelí, el dogmatismo se lo dejaremos para los columnistas que reciben paguita de grupos de presión, si bien es cierto que Cohen mira con desconfianza toda esa militarización hiperbólica que vive la región.
Los reyes de la mudanza nos habla por un lado de David King, un judío norteamericano que dirige un próspero negocio de mudanzas y por otro de Uri y Yoav, dos israelís que ejercen como puentes de esas dos esferas, ambas constituidas en rodillos de sectores vulnerables. Después de haber cumplido con el servicio militar obligatorio, como por lo visto hacen muchos jóvenes tras cumplir con ese deber, realizan un viaje, salen al mundo para descomprimir y rápidamente desentenderse de ese país que han estado defendiendo. Se da la circunstancia que David tiene parientes en Israel y es así como por esta conexión termina empleando a los dos jóvenes, que se suben a los camiones de la empresa en busca de las pertenencias de sus clientes.
Durante la novela Cohen establece las diferentes conexiones que existen entre los dos mundos, que de una forma muy simplificada se podría decir que se dedican a monetizar los grandes conflictos de sus respectivas sociedades (en un caso la crisis inmobiliaria derivada de la crisis económica de 2008 y en el otro el conflicto territorial con las poblaciones musulmanas) para expandirse, multiplicar sus riquezas y crecer a expensas de gente que sólo se puede defender ejerciendo una violencia directa con los ejecutores del poder, que en verdad no son los que idean sus problemas.
En algún punto se nos habla por ejemplo que David pueda disponer de ciertos capitales en el país mediterráneo y que al traspasarlos a Estados Unidos, simulando un préstamo, pueda volver a recobrarlos sin por ello pagar los debidos impuestos. Cuando David desea recuperar parte de ese dinero y acude al banco, aprovechando que en ese momento hay abierto otra batalla con los palestinos y hay que financiarla, en la entidad convencen a David no sólo para que no saque su dinero, si no para que aumente su depósito, si bien el rico empresario no se propone apoyar ninguna guerra de ningún tipo.
Este votante republicano además ha hecho crecer su empresa de mudanzas hasta disponer de bienes embargados, a veces con políticas empresariales algo torticeras, y encargarse también de desahucios de inmuebles de personas que no pueden afrontar pagos, de forma que al final Uri y Yoav ejercen actividades similares en los dos países, como peones de los poderosos contra los débiles, actividades que si están bien no les serán reconocidas y que si están mal, no son responsables. En todo caso, estos entornos les sumerge en un marcos mentales y una mentalidad que se reproduce en casi todos los estamentos de la sociedad, da igual que sea el ejército, la familia, la sociedad o la vida laboral, exagerando en ocasiones sus contradicciones internas y agrandando disgustos que no siempre están claros.
Claro que no todo es etéreo o elíptico. Cuando aborda el periplo de Uri dentro del ejército, viéndose el soldado saturado por diferentes sueños extraños, es aconsejado por cierto rabino que lo atiende y mediante palabras de la Torá le hacen ver que de la misma forma que tras el Bar Mitzvá no se deja de ser judío, cuando abandona el ejército no se abandona la guerra, la prédica religiosa puesta al servicio del dogmatismo estatal, sembrando la semilla de una ansiedad que se supone debe perdurar de forma indefinida, multiplicando el descontento, el extrañamiento y que al final de la novela termina eclosionando.
A Cohen se le ha llegado a comparar con David Foster Wallace, comparación que a mi juicio no resulta acertada dado que Wallace tiene bastante de literatura de empollones y hasta cierto punto es grandilocuente, imponiéndose ciertos grandes deberes de enmendar la sociedad desde la literatura. Cohen no cae en esos maximalismos, en verdad huye de todos esos grandes deberes auto-impuestos, consciente interrogar un tema es mejor hacerlo sin recetas, sin exagerar tensiones y constricciones que muchas veces son más útiles al ego del autor que no al valor del libro de turno.
La escritura de Cohen transmite cierto aire de desenfadado, es sumamente legible, aunque no por eso es liviana, en el fondo del texto se perciben inquietudes serias y que desea indagar en lo que abarcan las problemáticas sociales y el sentido de ciertas palabras, principalmente las relacionadas con con la identidad judía del autor. Su escritura es tan sumamente entretenida que me llegó a recordar a esas primeras lecturas de Jonathan Lethem, también capaz de hablar de temas dispares con soltura y gracia, capaz tanto de entretener como de reflexionar al mismo tiempo, y buscar llamativos detalles en la realidad sin necesidad de recurrir a tópicos que rebajen la lectura a una inofensiva mercadería cultural. Un artefacto que da la sensación que si no lo hubiese urdido el autor, nadie más hubiese podido.
December 28, 2017
An ambitious book that, despite the talented author, fails to live up to his thematic concern: equating the dispossessed, used and abused lower classes of Israel and Palestine who are locked in deadly combat with how the lower stratum of New York. It traces David King, in a too-obvious allusion to the biblical King David, a moving company owner who makes the majority of his money in evictions: moving out the defaulting homeowners at the mortgage company's expense, storing the goods in a David-owned storage facility, and selling those goods once the homeowner inevitably defaults on their payments.
David is a second-generation Polish Jew who is distant from his roots. He's been quite successful. He's a Republican and explains to the help why he'll never support a rise in the minimum wage... though, strange enough, Cohen never shares his reasoning with us. Too bad.
Enter, in a fashion by-now stereotypical of Jewish-American literature, a cousin from Israel, in this incarnation named Uri. At first, I had assumed Cohen was going to follow the script. King finds spiritual depth by connecting with the foreigner who is less materialistic and more evolved despite having less. Lucky for us, Cohen doesn't settle for Hallmark Channel niceties. Instead, he verges into the more interesting territory of the PTSD experienced by combat-hardened troops after fighting wars their governments wage.
Uri and his friend Yoav, freshly discharged Israeli soldiers, struggle to succeed in New York. Undocumented, they work for David. Uri handles it, but Yoav falls apart thinking about the brutality and banality of Israel's war with Palestine. What's more, he's guilt-ridden, knowing that on some level he's guilty of siding with a regime engaged in a senseless genocide.
The plot builds to a conclusion where David sends the two to repossess the home of a self-proclaimed Nation of Islam-style Muslim. Like Uri and Yoav, he's a vet, albeit of Vietnam. Another pointless war of imperial ambition waged by a population who doesn't need to on a people that much less powerful.
Thing is, it's here that Cohen's ambitions stumble. He tries (unsuccessfully) to tie this eviction, and the ability of David and wealthy bankers to impose their wills on the lower classes, to the geopolitical Israeli conflicts. And uses Yoav's growing madness to dramatize the conflict.
Sad to say, this book had plenty of potential, but I feel it should have been edited down to a short story or a novella. There is too much ancillary material that detracts from the poignant observation of the underclass/ overclass dynamic which weakens the overall impact for me. Still, Cohen's a great writer. His "failure" here is an ambition of the sort only a first-rate mind would even contemplate least alone attempt. So I will keep an eye out for more of his books.
3 stars. Closer to 3.5, but I just cannot get past the diffuse nature of the plots that should have been tight to round-up to 4.
David is a second-generation Polish Jew who is distant from his roots. He's been quite successful. He's a Republican and explains to the help why he'll never support a rise in the minimum wage... though, strange enough, Cohen never shares his reasoning with us. Too bad.
Enter, in a fashion by-now stereotypical of Jewish-American literature, a cousin from Israel, in this incarnation named Uri. At first, I had assumed Cohen was going to follow the script. King finds spiritual depth by connecting with the foreigner who is less materialistic and more evolved despite having less. Lucky for us, Cohen doesn't settle for Hallmark Channel niceties. Instead, he verges into the more interesting territory of the PTSD experienced by combat-hardened troops after fighting wars their governments wage.
Uri and his friend Yoav, freshly discharged Israeli soldiers, struggle to succeed in New York. Undocumented, they work for David. Uri handles it, but Yoav falls apart thinking about the brutality and banality of Israel's war with Palestine. What's more, he's guilt-ridden, knowing that on some level he's guilty of siding with a regime engaged in a senseless genocide.
The plot builds to a conclusion where David sends the two to repossess the home of a self-proclaimed Nation of Islam-style Muslim. Like Uri and Yoav, he's a vet, albeit of Vietnam. Another pointless war of imperial ambition waged by a population who doesn't need to on a people that much less powerful.
Thing is, it's here that Cohen's ambitions stumble. He tries (unsuccessfully) to tie this eviction, and the ability of David and wealthy bankers to impose their wills on the lower classes, to the geopolitical Israeli conflicts. And uses Yoav's growing madness to dramatize the conflict.
Sad to say, this book had plenty of potential, but I feel it should have been edited down to a short story or a novella. There is too much ancillary material that detracts from the poignant observation of the underclass/ overclass dynamic which weakens the overall impact for me. Still, Cohen's a great writer. His "failure" here is an ambition of the sort only a first-rate mind would even contemplate least alone attempt. So I will keep an eye out for more of his books.
3 stars. Closer to 3.5, but I just cannot get past the diffuse nature of the plots that should have been tight to round-up to 4.
October 23, 2017
A moving tale?
Anybody intrepid enough to have waded into Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers will know that he’s not an author to give them an easy ride. Moving Kings is certainly more accessible than his previous work but Cohen’s idiosyncratic way with words could still be a stumbling block. Or – as he might have it – stumbingblock. He runs words together, repeats key words in sentences and writes such stylised prose that it overwhelms his story. Which is a shame as it’s rather a good one.
David King is the personification of the American Dream: the comfortably-off owner of a successful removals business. A man who has ‘married out’, sired a wayward daughter, a man who feels a link – however tenuous – with the remnants of his family in Israel. One, the son of David’s Israeli cousin, is a young man called Yoav who comes to work for him in New York and finds it hard to adjust following his compulsory tour of duty in the IDF.
Insights into the business of moving people from one home to another are all too brief and it might have been interesting had the author expanded on this aspect. The ultimate removal – that of eviction – brings the threads of the story together. I should have been moved. But the fact is, I wasn’t. What should have been a chilling climax became something of a bizarre style-fest and, to be honest, I couldn’t quite follow it. Too clever by half, Mr Cohen.
Anybody intrepid enough to have waded into Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers will know that he’s not an author to give them an easy ride. Moving Kings is certainly more accessible than his previous work but Cohen’s idiosyncratic way with words could still be a stumbling block. Or – as he might have it – stumbingblock. He runs words together, repeats key words in sentences and writes such stylised prose that it overwhelms his story. Which is a shame as it’s rather a good one.
David King is the personification of the American Dream: the comfortably-off owner of a successful removals business. A man who has ‘married out’, sired a wayward daughter, a man who feels a link – however tenuous – with the remnants of his family in Israel. One, the son of David’s Israeli cousin, is a young man called Yoav who comes to work for him in New York and finds it hard to adjust following his compulsory tour of duty in the IDF.
Insights into the business of moving people from one home to another are all too brief and it might have been interesting had the author expanded on this aspect. The ultimate removal – that of eviction – brings the threads of the story together. I should have been moved. But the fact is, I wasn’t. What should have been a chilling climax became something of a bizarre style-fest and, to be honest, I couldn’t quite follow it. Too clever by half, Mr Cohen.
December 14, 2020
elyunquedehefesto.blogspot.com/2020/1...
Cuando nos criamos dentro del sistema tendemos a venerarlo casi como a un dios. Un ente divino y protector que nos dispensa orden y justicia. Pero con el tiempo esa visión puede cambiar. A veces, ese poder superior carente de rostro nos obliga (por amor a la bandera y a nuestros conciudadanos, y en pos del “bien común”), a desempeñar tareas que nunca habríamos realizado por propia voluntad. Tal vez sea ese el momento en el que comprendamos la verdadera naturaleza del dios-estado, y reconozcamos en él a un tirano que nos convierte en herramientas despiadadas y prescindibles.
Yoav y Uri, dos jóvenes israelíes, descubrieron esa verdad durante su servicio militar en Gaza. Incapaces de olvidar cada puerta derribada, cada disparo, cada familia deshecha, y cada muerte, encuentran imposible reincorporarse a la vida civil dentro de un país que ya no pueden ver de la misma forma que antes de ser reclutados. Así que Yoav parte a Nueva York en busca de una sociedad más justa y libre, donde la tradición no se sienta omnipresente y pueda empezar de cero. David King, su exitoso tío propietario de una empresa de mudanzas y depósitos, le ofrecerá trabajo y un techo, así que pronto conseguirá que Uri, el amigo que tantas veces le salvó la vida, le acompañe.
Joshua Cohen, máximo exponente de la narrativa judía-norteamericana actual, ha escrito una novela desgarradora en la que sus protagonistas van resquebrajándose lentamente al ir comprendiendo que han dejado de ser soldados de un ejército, para convertirse en el brazo ejecutor que el capitalismo emplea contra los más desfavorecidos. Y es que poco a poco, casi inadvertidamente, va estableciendo paralelismos entre la política de ocupación israelí y la voracidad inmisericorde de un sistema en el que todo es sustituible, desechable, y donde nadie está a salvo. Ni siquiera aquellos que han triunfado por sus propios medios, como David, pueden llegar a ser algo más que unos advenedizos entre quienes realmente mueven los hilos.
Desarraigo, soledad, remordimiento... todos los personajes de esta novela han sido derrotados por la vida. Todos. Desde el dueño de mudanzas King, un naufrago en cada faceta de su vida vida personal, hasta el último hombre expulsado de su hogar y dispuesto a cualquier cosa fruto de la desesperación.
En Nueva York no es necesario que se declare una guerra para asistir a escenas repletas de violencia e inhumanidad. Ni tampoco un enemigo declarado para que cada grupo étnico mire con desprecio al resto. Al igual que en Gaza, quien se siente fuerte abusa del débil sin pensar que algún día el sistema-dios podría masticarlo y escupirlo, podría reemplazarlo y situarlo en ese mismo lugar.
Subíos al camión de mudanzas. Escuchad las conversaciones de los operarios que se preparan para un desahucio, pero no les juzguéis. Simplemente escuchad. Cohen os destrozará y os quitará la esperanza. Puede que incluso os haga sentir mal. Pero un tiempo después notaréis que la huella que ha dejado en vosotros crece. Y le estaréis agradecidos.
Cuando nos criamos dentro del sistema tendemos a venerarlo casi como a un dios. Un ente divino y protector que nos dispensa orden y justicia. Pero con el tiempo esa visión puede cambiar. A veces, ese poder superior carente de rostro nos obliga (por amor a la bandera y a nuestros conciudadanos, y en pos del “bien común”), a desempeñar tareas que nunca habríamos realizado por propia voluntad. Tal vez sea ese el momento en el que comprendamos la verdadera naturaleza del dios-estado, y reconozcamos en él a un tirano que nos convierte en herramientas despiadadas y prescindibles.
Yoav y Uri, dos jóvenes israelíes, descubrieron esa verdad durante su servicio militar en Gaza. Incapaces de olvidar cada puerta derribada, cada disparo, cada familia deshecha, y cada muerte, encuentran imposible reincorporarse a la vida civil dentro de un país que ya no pueden ver de la misma forma que antes de ser reclutados. Así que Yoav parte a Nueva York en busca de una sociedad más justa y libre, donde la tradición no se sienta omnipresente y pueda empezar de cero. David King, su exitoso tío propietario de una empresa de mudanzas y depósitos, le ofrecerá trabajo y un techo, así que pronto conseguirá que Uri, el amigo que tantas veces le salvó la vida, le acompañe.
Joshua Cohen, máximo exponente de la narrativa judía-norteamericana actual, ha escrito una novela desgarradora en la que sus protagonistas van resquebrajándose lentamente al ir comprendiendo que han dejado de ser soldados de un ejército, para convertirse en el brazo ejecutor que el capitalismo emplea contra los más desfavorecidos. Y es que poco a poco, casi inadvertidamente, va estableciendo paralelismos entre la política de ocupación israelí y la voracidad inmisericorde de un sistema en el que todo es sustituible, desechable, y donde nadie está a salvo. Ni siquiera aquellos que han triunfado por sus propios medios, como David, pueden llegar a ser algo más que unos advenedizos entre quienes realmente mueven los hilos.
Desarraigo, soledad, remordimiento... todos los personajes de esta novela han sido derrotados por la vida. Todos. Desde el dueño de mudanzas King, un naufrago en cada faceta de su vida vida personal, hasta el último hombre expulsado de su hogar y dispuesto a cualquier cosa fruto de la desesperación.
En Nueva York no es necesario que se declare una guerra para asistir a escenas repletas de violencia e inhumanidad. Ni tampoco un enemigo declarado para que cada grupo étnico mire con desprecio al resto. Al igual que en Gaza, quien se siente fuerte abusa del débil sin pensar que algún día el sistema-dios podría masticarlo y escupirlo, podría reemplazarlo y situarlo en ese mismo lugar.
Subíos al camión de mudanzas. Escuchad las conversaciones de los operarios que se preparan para un desahucio, pero no les juzguéis. Simplemente escuchad. Cohen os destrozará y os quitará la esperanza. Puede que incluso os haga sentir mal. Pero un tiempo después notaréis que la huella que ha dejado en vosotros crece. Y le estaréis agradecidos.
September 27, 2017
With his offbeat prose, knack for quick characterizations, and wicked sense of irony, Joshua Cohen is a born short-story writer. Unfortunately, "Moving Kings" is a novel, and even at a trim 240 pages it can't justify its length, unless you consider stuffing an 800-page DeLillo epic's worth of digressions into a short book to be an admirable achievement. Buried among all the aphorisms is a potentially brutal short story about two Israeli army veterans evicting an old, opiate-addicted Black Muslim from his mother's foreclosed home in the Bronx. But instead, Mr. Cohen overstuffs "Moving Kings" with roughly 200 pages of character development that so overdetermines the action that the few actual events in his threadbare narrative become anticlimactic. Mr. Cohen is a talented writer. I wish he weren't so aware of that fact. And as https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... points out, women don't exist in this world.
July 19, 2020
Read very quickly and under assault from the relentlessly adorable life-catastrophes of a new puppy. Therefore no cogent or pensive review to be found here: I likd dis book. Cohen smart funny good. Jewyness odd to bone, Merica nationalism religion fukkedup, words reprieve but pieces (goyim I am but I am faithlessly tracking Tikkun).
August 17, 2017
Incredibly uneven. The sections of Moving Kings focused on David King, president of King's Moving, are funny, insightful, and compelling. The rest of the book, however, is just sort of two-dimensional characters being bleak and screaming into the existential void.
December 31, 2022
Μια Ροθικη σατυρα του νεοισραηλινου λομπι στις ΗΠΑ του σημερα μεσα απο καθημερινες ιστοριες τρελας
Γκροτεσκες σκηνές κ απειρο γελιο
Κριμα ομως που το πραγματικο προβλημα του Ισραηλ κ των Εβραίων δεν ειναι για γελια
Γκροτεσκες σκηνές κ απειρο γελιο
Κριμα ομως που το πραγματικο προβλημα του Ισραηλ κ των Εβραίων δεν ειναι για γελια
April 25, 2018
Cohen portrays real characters with poetic language in this relatively short novel. The plot is minor, with lots of subtext about race and prejudice (the Israelis taunting the Arabs; the whites thinking the Israelis are Arabs; the Mexicans feeling superior to the Israelis because of the language barrier; the question of authentic Judasim), but the tone is compelling enough to keep it moving along nicely.
Cohen is great with words: "The man, swimfit in a slim cut suit" for example, but also in his apt description of non-important (and therefore frequently overlooked) pieces: "What was striking about fireworks was the expectancy involved. You were never sure if they were over. A rally would come, and the brilliance would spike, and then flatline away into vapors, and you'd tell yourself, that was it, that was the finale. But then there'd be a hiss, and you'd tell yourself, have patience, the ending is still coming." and "a moustache, that lip garnish that serves as an expression of some inner ambivalence: even if someone with a moustache is smiling, he's also always frowning--the mouth can turn up, but the hairs point down."
Cohen addressed the difficulty in leaving the armed forces (even when one was conscripted in the first place) and makes some great UNMENTIONED (so many authors have to beat a dead horse out of fear a reader won't notice,but Cohen did not even draw the arrows here) connections between the African American experience in Vietnam and the Israeli experience in modern times. Yoav attempts to wax philsopohical, but he also is superior to Uri in real life; Uri cannot adapt to the post-army life and his less than superior placement. And then, to top it off, Yoav owes his life to Uri. We are bound to those who help us, even if their later help causes more harm. The irony, of course, is that Uri was wasting away in Israel, but coming to America gets him killed.
And my favorite quote: "just as the backup cops were slicking him down with their knees in his back, Little Djinn lunged out swinging--so a copy shot him, so the other cops shot, each firing to empty for a share of the blame." Of course, the cops don't always actually get the blame (recently there is at least a lot of media disappointment in racist shootings).
Overall it is a solid character piece about identity, recovering from serving in the military, and racism.
Cohen is great with words: "The man, swimfit in a slim cut suit" for example, but also in his apt description of non-important (and therefore frequently overlooked) pieces: "What was striking about fireworks was the expectancy involved. You were never sure if they were over. A rally would come, and the brilliance would spike, and then flatline away into vapors, and you'd tell yourself, that was it, that was the finale. But then there'd be a hiss, and you'd tell yourself, have patience, the ending is still coming." and "a moustache, that lip garnish that serves as an expression of some inner ambivalence: even if someone with a moustache is smiling, he's also always frowning--the mouth can turn up, but the hairs point down."
Cohen addressed the difficulty in leaving the armed forces (even when one was conscripted in the first place) and makes some great UNMENTIONED (so many authors have to beat a dead horse out of fear a reader won't notice,but Cohen did not even draw the arrows here) connections between the African American experience in Vietnam and the Israeli experience in modern times. Yoav attempts to wax philsopohical, but he also is superior to Uri in real life; Uri cannot adapt to the post-army life and his less than superior placement. And then, to top it off, Yoav owes his life to Uri. We are bound to those who help us, even if their later help causes more harm. The irony, of course, is that Uri was wasting away in Israel, but coming to America gets him killed.
And my favorite quote: "just as the backup cops were slicking him down with their knees in his back, Little Djinn lunged out swinging--so a copy shot him, so the other cops shot, each firing to empty for a share of the blame." Of course, the cops don't always actually get the blame (recently there is at least a lot of media disappointment in racist shootings).
Overall it is a solid character piece about identity, recovering from serving in the military, and racism.
January 30, 2018
The bottom line of wunderkind Joshua Cohen's compact and marvelous MOVING KINGS, though I am hardly certain you could actually call it a selling point, would appear to be a bristling conflation between lives lived by peoples of minority ethnicity in the poorer sections of New York's outer boroughs and those lived in Gaza, both kinds of living in one sense or another made to be understood as lives lived under occupation. Though we have recourse to brief insights into the bedraggled life of one African American Vietnam vet, a convert to Islam w/ little left to lose, the bulk of our attention is directed toward characters who may be said to be beneficiaries or agents of occupation, not that their struggles and travails lack substantialness or legitimacy. Though 'beneficiaries' may hardly be apt. There is not a sense in MOVING KINGS that the state of affairs, business as usual, is doing anybody any particular favours. Certainly not anybody we meet, least of David King, wealthy Jewish New York moving and storage magnate, impotent as a result of cardiac troubles, father of a daughter who loathes him but nonetheless uses him like an ATM. A man, in fact, w/ no relationships in good working order, his relative wealth hardly seeming like much consolation. Enter his younger cousin, once removed. Yoav. Fresh from Israel. Scarred (literally) from his recent mandatory military service. Then enter Uri, Yoav's better in all matters combat and in many ways his id. The crux of Cohen's gambit here (sly and maybe brilliant) is to frame Yoav and Uri's post-service relocation from the mire of the West Bank to moving and storing the contents of repossessed homes in Greater New York as little more than a transition from one theater of operations to another. Though there is a sense of intractable destiny woven into the fabric of MOVING KINGS, the novel is by no means structured like a forward march. Cohen uses form like something of a literary showman which, based on the results, is all to the good. Perspectives are splintered and timelines are elastic. We often back up to gain a purchase, or otherwise barrel forward when Cohen's mandate insists that we do. The writing is likewise not short on style. Quotidian language is fucked w/ and gainfully denatured. It was clear going in that I was about to read my first novel by a young novelist of repute and I can certainly accede that his reputation would appear to be amply justified.
October 13, 2017
I must amend this review to say that I recently heard Joshua Cohen on the Shakespeare & Company podcast on the topic of Moving Kings and my estimation of the book has gone way up. I really recommend listening to those who have read it. I just wish I had gotten more of this, more of him, in the actual book. I still feel the book could have been expanded, that it was only half what it could have been, but the interview really brought home the possibilities. He may be one of those writers whom editors/publishers shouldn't push to finish something (I'm only speculating here). My original review below:
Joshua Cohen is obviously a good writer, but this is like half a novel. As another reviewer brilliantly commented, it's really just a short story padded out with lots of characterization. It's like the first draft for a book with some very well-written-out set pieces. Or like a treatment for an HBO drama.
Also, men men men manly masculine muscular prose for men. No women (well, barely). The imagination for that half of humanity just isn't there - in this book, at least.
Joshua Cohen is obviously a good writer, but this is like half a novel. As another reviewer brilliantly commented, it's really just a short story padded out with lots of characterization. It's like the first draft for a book with some very well-written-out set pieces. Or like a treatment for an HBO drama.
Also, men men men manly masculine muscular prose for men. No women (well, barely). The imagination for that half of humanity just isn't there - in this book, at least.
Read
June 17, 2025This asked a lot of me in the course of its not-very-many pages. I'm glad I read it. (I am not reading those two doorstop ones.) The Netanyahus made me mad but I could appreciate its unambiguous brilliance. This is a more ambiguous brilliance. The central conceit here is that there exists some strange, sad consonance between the Israeli occupation and outer-borough eviction moving. I guess. I'm not sure what Cohen wishes to say about it, though, and I don't think the parallelism is set up particularly elegantly. There are some really evocative turns of phrase and characterizations. Yes, it is DFW-esque. (Sorry! Sorry!!!) It's uneven. Characters appear and disappear in ways I do not understand over the course of a novel too short to reasonably lose track of anyone. But I'm impressed by the ambition — and some parts of the execution — here.
Read
August 29, 2025This was great to read while beginning work with a housing economist.
Reading about both fictionalized and theoretical foreclosures in Moving Kings and Real Estate Finance: A modern approach.
Reminds me who I'm running regressions for 30 days only for there to be an error in the code for.
The metaphorical relationship between Israeli occupation and evictions in NYC felt both very over and under determined. What was Joshua trying to communicate with this?
Reading about both fictionalized and theoretical foreclosures in Moving Kings and Real Estate Finance: A modern approach.
Reminds me who I'm running regressions for 30 days only for there to be an error in the code for.
The metaphorical relationship between Israeli occupation and evictions in NYC felt both very over and under determined. What was Joshua trying to communicate with this?
September 21, 2025
Sometimes the prose made me feel like I was having a stroke
December 14, 2017
Stark och synnerligen välskriven
December 19, 2017
Some of this was very inside, using Hebrew, Hebrew slang and army slang at times, but there was also an attempt at universalizing the experience of the conscript and the sense of not knowing why or who you have served. I don't think the novel succeeds throughout, it's tonally inconsistent and sometimes the stream of consciousness just feels ill-disciplined, but it's certainly part of an interesting trend. For decades US Jewish novelists have been focused on the experience of being other in America, seeming to fit in, while not. This is the third book this year (after Englander and Krauss), where an American Jewish novelist directly addresses Israel. Fascinating.
January 24, 2023
Leggere questo libro di Cohen è un poco come vedere una partita di Sinner che perde a 5 set contro Tsitsipas in un grande slam. Sai che il talento c'è, che molto probabilmente ti aspettano dallo stesso autore grandi soddisfazioni, ma non è ancora il momento. Le mie aspettative per il libro dei numeri dopo questa lettura sono cresciute a dismisura. Per me è un libro da 6,5-7
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