Jewish author to re-write Shakespear's 'Merchant of Venice'

Unbelievably or rather all too believably, a Jewish author, one Howard Jacobson has been commissioned by Hogarth Press, a Penguin Publishing offshoot to re-write 'The Merchant of Venice'.
Jacobson won the "Man Booker Prize" in 2010 for his work "The Finkler Question", which is, no surprises here, a book written by a Jew about two Jewish men wrestling yet again with the tedious and much over-written 'Jewish Question'.
I am going into this in more depth in this week's 'The White Nationalist' - the destruction of the Merchant of Venice, now being branded, a racist story, ( available if you subscribe to TWN - e-mail nationalistfreepress@gmail.com to be added to our free weekly e-newspaper), but to give you an idea of the sort of stuff I fear Jacobson will be introducing into 'The Merchant of Venice' - I am putting below a review of the twisted and weird plot to 'The Finkler Question'.

Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular former BBC radio producer, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they remain good friends, keeping contact with their former teacher Libor Sevcik, a Jewish Czech nearing ninety who once tutored in Czech history and worked part-time as a Hollywood gossip columnist.

Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and Treslove's chequered and unsuccessful record with women qualify him as an honorary third widower. They dine together at Libor's grand apartment in central London: it is a sweetly painful evening of reminiscences. At 11:30 pm that evening, Treslove is attacked while walking home. It seems he is mugged by a woman who hisses the phrase "You Ju" at him. After much cogitation, Treslove believes what the assailant meant was "You, Jew", sparking a long-running obsession with all things and people Jewish – which he refers to as "Finkler". Treslove gets into a relationship with Hephzibah, the great grandniece of Libor, and is haunted by his adulterous affair with Tyler, Finkler's deceased wife. In the meantime, Finkler joins an "ASHamed" organization which favours the Palestinians over the Israelis over their land disputes. The novel coalesce into an ending that brings together the disparate narrative strands amongst the three central male characters.

Dickens' got this treatment over his book 'Oliver Twist'. The musical 'Oliver' turned Fagin, a grasping and evil user of young children, into a loveable rogue - methinks Dickens knew a lot more about London conditions in the 19th century than that oddball over hyped Jacobson does!

 

Jacobson - we think

 

Shylock - we think