Feh

Reviews

Praise for FEH

“Shalom Auslander is a truth teller whose punim you want to pinch… Feh is a dark, daffy chronicle of failure and disappointment. . .Feh inverts the old tagline ‘never let them see you sweat’; it is all sweat on display, salty and messy, the exposed shirt stains of someone determined to be a bronze medalist even at the insecurity Olympics.” —The New York Times

“Auslander’s literary career has been built on equal parts comedy, heterodoxy and self-loathing. . .His oeuvre is deliberately unsettling and funny. . .the persistent blackness of the book’s black comedy makes the tiny shafts of light in the latter chapters shine that much brighter. None dare call it a redemption narrative — that’s feh-talk — but Auslander does find a place where he doesn’t have to be overwhelmed with contempt for himself or others. . .The two are intertwined. Even if we work to fix our predicament — expunge ourselves of pointless shame, stop courting needless self-harm — it’s unlikely we’ll ever stop entirely hating ourselves. But we can try, as Auslander does for much of Feh to write a story that’s still honest, without feeding into the hate.”—The Washington Post

“A poignant, profane, and scabrously funny exploration. . .As Auslander attempts to exorcise his demons and rewrite his origin story in a more positive light, the book takes on a ‘meta’ flavor in line with the narrative we humans have been telling ourselves lately about the way we use storytelling to make sense of our lives.” —Associated Press

"The most mov­ing, indeed enlight­en­ing sec­tions of the book reveal how Aus­lan­der slow­ly begins to break out of the dark… Above all, Aus­lan­der cred­its his sur­vival to his clear-think­ing, green-eyed, artist wife, Orli, who nev­er fails to make him laugh. For in the end, the psy­cho­log­i­cal pain caused by feh can be eased only through laughter… At the end of Feh, Aus­lan­der begins to glimpse that light, reflect­ed in the glit­ter­ing eyes of Orli and his two sons. He dis­cov­ers an alter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ty, a tribe of feh out­casts who sur­vive by jok­ing away their shame.”— Jewish Book Council

"Auslander blends both a sense of despair and a self-deprecating whimsy in his latest ...Part personal history, part self-examination, and part social commentary, his book addresses everything from Kafka to capitalism…A page-turning memoir that shouldn’t be missed... It could motivate readers to keep trudging onward, even when life seems overwhelming.” —Library Journal

"Outrageously funny…With humor and heart-wrenching detail, Auslander confronts his deep-seated self-loathing and warns of how received stories can do psychological damage…The memoir is as iconoclastically funny as Auslander's fiction, but it's also reassuring.”—Shelf Awareness

"A poignant…study of the religious guilt….The result is an often-brutal, sometimes-rewarding journey out of the darkness.” —LitHub
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