“My Camp”
by Joshua Cohen
from the October 21, 2024 issue of The New Yorker
A few years ago Joshua Cohen won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Netanyahus. I really enjoyed it, and so I’m glad to have something new by him in this week’s New Yorker. Clearly the title is meant to evoke a notorious book, and Cohen certainly doesn’t mind pushing buttons and making folks uncomfortable. I’m not sure what to expect. This first paragraph isn’t helping:
Human nature, yes. Nature nature, no. I know nothing about it. A rose is a rose is my tradition, but then feelings lead us outside tradition, they lure us beyond it, and I feel nature deeply. I feel its lack of interest in me, its lack of humanity jibing with my inner emptiness; I like how its trees come together to make a forest that shows me how to breathe, and how its boulders show me how to concentrate. I’m content having these immature, idealizing poetic-romantic emotions about the great outdoors and don’t want to know anything more, chiefly because I’ve always regarded the outdoors as a refuge from knowledge — a haven of ignorance to feel to whenever the city news runs me down.
I’ll have to read that again to follow it better, but that’s okay! I still like it! Please share your thoughts below.
A
Sorry, please ignore previous post. (I don’t see a way of deleting it.) I was interested in this piece as a
secular pro-Palestinian Jew.
I offer only a brief comment on the choice of title. I don’t agree that this is a direct allusion to Hitler’s
book, because I don’t think that would make any sense. I think the title is rather a reference to
Knausgaard’s magnum opus which is called “Min kamp” in the original Norwegian. The extended
references to nature, and how we react to it, seem much more Knausgaardian than Hitlerian. I hate to admit that my knowledge of Knausgaard is only secondary — I’ve read nothing by him but I have
read a ton of reviews of his work.
Haha—I can delete your other comment when I get to a computer, Paul :-)
And I like your comment on Knausgaard, though I will note Cohen explicitly discusses Hitler’s book in his interview. I still haven’t read this one yet, though, so I need to to see where I land!
Thanks Trevor for your feedback. I read the interview now. The author was asked about his choice of title, but his rather cryptic reply seems to totally back up my comment that an allusion to Mein
Kampf wouldn’t make any sense. In the interview, he seems to say (but this is my interpretation)
that despite not making any sense, he went with that title anyway. So my Knausgaard reference was
an attempt to make sense of the title, bearing in mind the extensive foreign references in Min Kamp.
One of my English lecturers at Uni (who taught the Romantic Poets — Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake)
told me once (and I’m sure this is completely uncontroversial) that authors don’t necessarily
“know best” when commenting on their own work.
“foreign references” -> “forest references”
How recently must Cohen have updated this piece? What’s missing that would date it before the New Yorker issue was released?
Although I haven’t read any of Cohen’s essays or other fiction, what I take from *this writing, along with the author interview, is Cohen’s (not only his narrator’s) unwillingness to take an explicit stand on the Israel/Gaza issue, at least publicly.
I don’t know whether Cohen is a religious Jew, nor do I know his political views. For me to assume Cohen’s underlying position would be presumptuous. So I’ll only suggest that he (they) seem to be attached to Jewish “identity”, tied up with Israel, which they don’t seem to want to betray.
If this is not the case, then I suggest that this is what they, or any Jew could say:
“Although I condemn the actions of Hamas a year ago, that does not require me to condone the response of the Israeli government since then. I condemn the excessive and genocidal actions against Gaza by Netanyahu’s Israeli government. They violate my moral sensibilities as a Jew and a human being.”
If Cohen has actually said anything like that elsewhere, someone please inform me. But his writer-narrator does not, even if something like that may be implied. He won’t even correct someone who congratulates him for a commentary which he did not write. Why might that be?
As writers, it would be a threat to their profession. They may not want to be “cancelled” by many Jewish readers and others for whom support of Israel is a given, and anyone who believes criticism of Israel is “anti-Semetic”.
On a YouTube video called “David Barsamian Interviews Richard Forer About Blaming the Victim on September 12, 2024”, historian Forer points out that immediately following October 7th, 2023 Netanyahu referred to the Palestinians as “Amalekites”, a peoples in the Hebrew Bible considered the enemy of the Jews, whom Jehovah ordered Moses and subsequent others to destroy, every last one, including women and children, sheep and cattle… And that Netanyahu said, “we should turn Gaza into an island of ruin.” Forer also mentions Albert Einstein’s apprehension that Israel might end up doing to the Palestinians what Germany did to the Jews. Is it really unfair to compare Netanyahu to Hitler?
I recommend readers of “My Camp” check out that interview for context on the subject. Forer says the study of history wholly changed his view on the subject. He wrote a book, _Wake Up and Reclaim Your Humanity: Essays on the Tragedy of Israel-Palestine_ , which I’m tempted to read.
There’s also a talk “A Brief History of Zionism”, by historian Zachary Lockman, which I found valuable for context, which is available to hear at:
http colon slash slash cjsw dot com slash program/alternative-radio/episode/20241016
Reading “My Camp” triggered another thought: Why are Biden and Harris so lenient on Israel/Netanyahu? Is it maybe not only to maintain the strong alliance with this powerful Middle East country? Is it maybe analogous to the motivation I suggested Cohen/narrator had? Better to alienate Arabic-Americans than Jewish Americans? A larger block of voters?
Evil? Well, even beyond supporting their party, is it maybe because the opposing candidate has publicly said he advocates that Netanyahu “finish the job” ? How would that suit Biden and Harris critics if Harris loses?
Why are people discussing the war and not the story? Isn’t this Cohen’s point ? that everyone piles on as if they are the only ones with the truth. His friends, he points out, aren’t questioning themselves or their own self torture.
I found the ending as well as many of the character’s comments to be so surprising and crazy! Loved this piece. I loved the intro paragraph too because it veers into such a surprise turn. Nature, as is so often described, isn’t a mother. It’s not even aware of you.
Talk about alienation! This is darkly funny.
Be forewarned: There will be spoilers in my comment. I don’t think that would have spoiled the story for me, but others may feel differently.
Thank you, Jocelyn, for mentioning the plot. You are right that much more could be said about that. I’ll try to add a bit, and hope you and others will, too. On your comment about the narrator: “His friends, he points out, aren’t questioning themselves or their own self torture.” Would you elaborate on that?
It’s interesting that you refer to “Cohen’s point”, and then to “his friends”. Are you equating Cohen with the unnamed first person narrator?
When I first read the story, I took the author to be casting himself (or fictional version) as the narrating character. Not knowing much about Cohen himself, I needed to read his post-story interview, and a brief bio of Cohen, to discover to what extent the character and circumstances are fictional.
The two are clearly not entirely one and the same. They are, however, largely the same, both American, Jewish writers and professors, both born and raised in New Jersey, living and working in NYC. In the interview, Cohen says he lived for some time in Israel. I don’t offhand recall whether the narrating character said he did, also.
Interesting that in the interview, when asked whether he wants the reader not to identify the narrator with him, Cohen replied that he intentionally didn’t call the narrator “Joshua”, but that he “figured out” that it makes no difference what he wants from the reader. Hmm… Is that why he drew a narrator so similar to himself?
Here I am, again making the mistake of reading the author’s comments instead of looking at the story entirely on it own…
Plot? First off, the narrator looks for a retreat from his NYC world, and he chooses a natural area in the “Pine Barrens” of New Jersey.
The first paragraph (quoted in Trevor’s intro) states well the narrating character’s escapist inclinations. That seems to me a central theme of the story.
After the Hamas attack, the narrator wants to escape that issue, too, but he allows his cousin to draw him into a scheme to covertly help protect Israeli fighters. Beyond that, he won’t write about the war, and largely avoids talking about it, even evades his students’ questions. Might we suspect that this is at least partly from fear that he might be fired, considering he has hinted (at least to us) some sympathy for Gaza? He had already allowed a man he conversed with to wrongly believe he had written something to the contrary. Later, he allowed another man to assume what he liked.
As the story ends, he privately contributes to “Gaza affiliated charities”, then retreats to his camp to write…
This story, the narrator’s account, he (the narrator) hides away. Assuming the author is not the author, he (the author) has stolen and published it.
Oh, I forgot: this is fiction.
The last couple of lines has me baffled… unless it is more of the narrator’s rationalization for his escapism? I hope others will weigh in on this.
Haven’t I covered more than enough of “the plot”? .At the same time, not enough, because the Israel-Hamas war, and the narrator’s response to it, is central to the plot.
The narrator, let’s *us recognize that he condemns Hamas’s cruel slaughter of many innocent Israelis, and also condemns the atrociously massive slaughter of innocent people in Gaza in response. By “massive”, we’re looking at nearly *40 times* as many as Hamas murdered, and probably well over 50 times, were the unknown buried and lost in the rubble to be counted. They aren’t being directly murdered in the horrible way Hamas did it, but they surely have suffered no less, by direction of Netanyahu. Then also count the (countless) numbers maimed and starved and homeless and bereaved… and *all suffering nearly 400 days of terror, so far…
It is true that no one has the whole truth, as Jocelyn pointed out. But it would be delusional to suggest that what I have described above is not true—*and it is an essential part of the story’s plot. This is historical fiction.
In my previous comment, I judged the author too harshly. He seems to make his views known, by choice indirectly, in his fiction. Does anyone know whether he, unlike his fictional narrator, has written his views in op-ed form?
A further subject for discussion, too much for me to get into now:
How reliable is the narrator as a witness within the story? For that matter, how reliable is the author in his interview? And how reliable is the reader?…
Paul and Trevor: I’m not clear about this issue of “Min Kamp” vs “Mein Kamph”. I’d be interested in more discussion on that.
Trivial point, but someone please tell me:
In NYC cafes, if you are simply accompanying someone at a table who makes an order, are you expected to order something, too? I’ve never heard of anything like that where I come from!
My Camp, per the interview, is where do you stand on the issue. However, also think My Camp as My Settlement. The land of Israel was rustic when they incorporated it, as is the camp. Perhaps the author is saying Israel has gotten some of the land illicitly, as the New Jersey property.
I may be a bit late for a response, but did readers see this helmet-shipping company as actually shipping helmets (my assumption)? If it was legit, why does he make statements that imply there’s something surreptitious? Is it because this is illegal, but he considers it moral (or he’s divided as he later gives to Gaza relief).
The best part of “My Camp,” for me is the line, “I became a writer so I could choose my own words and speak for myself.” I realize this is a fictional quote by a fictional writer, but it seems very close to how the actual writer, Joshua Cohen, actually feels. To me, it is one of the best mantras that the most excellent, most important writers always have or can have.
I didn’t think this story was a satire at all. Instead as the author says, it is “heartfelt” and it is “realism”. The character’s ambivalence brings clarity that better describes a tragic crisis that is ongoing.
Part of the realism that is so well expressed is how we are in an such an extreme era of outrage, where either side is totally outraged that anyone could disagree with them or not line up in their “camp” because it is the only one that could possibly be untainted by evil. By which means any ambivalence shown by anyone becomes suspect to the outraged on either side.
The author’s fictional focus on money collected for the protective helmet purchase, to fund clean drinking water in the battle zone, or money for prosthesis or plastic surgery facial reconstruction for the badly injured also manifests the ambiguity the protagonist feels.
“My Camp” opens up or can possibly open up a dialog within a reader’s mind between two extremely divided perspectives. Which is very rare and therefore very welcome.