{"id":12005,"date":"2010-05-10T10:07:03","date_gmt":"2010-05-10T14:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=12005"},"modified":"2016-06-09T17:14:40","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T21:14:40","slug":"nathan-englander-free-fruit-for-young-widows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/05\/10\/nathan-englander-free-fruit-for-young-widows\/","title":{"rendered":"Nathan Englander: “Free Fruit for Young Widows”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Free Fruit for Young Widows\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby Nathan Englander<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the May 17, 2010 issue of The New Yorker.\r\n<\/em>Click <\/span>here <\/a>to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker <\/em>webpage.<\/span><\/pre>\n
\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n
I actually read this story last Wednesday (it is now Monday).\u00a0My delay in posting comments is the direct result of my not caring at all about this story. My actually posting comments has everything to do with my care for this forum.<\/p>\n
The basic premise: a Jewish father, Shimmy Gezer,\u00a0is trying to explain his war-riddled past to his young son, Etgar.\u00a0As the years go by, he finds he\u00a0can explain more, finally relating a story about one of their family acquaintances,\u00a0the respected Professor Tendler. Of course, this was before he was a professor — before he had a high school degree, in fact.\u00a0After Egypt took control of the Suez Canal,\u00a0the French to pull their support from Egypt to join Israel.\u00a0However, in the confusion, each side ended up having French issued, identical uniforms. One day, when Shimmy sat down for lunch with two commandos, Tendler came over, put down his teacup and shot the two commandos in the head. It turned out they were Egyptians who had, seeing the identical uniforms, joined the wrong side for lunch.<\/p>\n
That is the first few paragraphs.\u00a0The remainder of the story is Shimmy and Etgar’s discussions of Tendler’s conduct.\u00a0How could he do it? Why does Shimmy respect Tendler so much?\u00a0It just didn’t work for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker fiction is Nathan Englander’s “Free Fruit for Young Widows.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Nathan Englander: \"Free Fruit for Young Widows\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[295,94],"tags":[998],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-12005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nathan-englander","category-new-yorker-fiction","tag-2010-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Free-Fruit-for-Young-Widows.jpg?fit=1077%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-37D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12005"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18597,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12005\/revisions\/18597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12005"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}