Evoking the clash of tone and subject found in movies like The Producers and The Great Dictator, The Yid is a screwball farce about atrocity. History here is portrayed as a mad improvisation in which the actors take charge and manically rewrite the script even as they enact it. Paul Goldberg's animating intelligence gives all this madness a stunning coherence that these days we all too rarely get from either art or life.
Mr. Goldberg is successful at weaving his invented characters into the fabric of history, but less successful at making them come alive. At best, they represent historical archetypes ... What carries The Yid is the strength of its premise: It allows for the possibility of resistance instead of resignation in the face of tyranny.
It’s a lack of nuance that might explain why the characters in The Yid and their triumphant story are less compelling than the book’s historical background. The ragtag bunch goes on its mission and certain plot moves need to occur along the way. But we want to understand why the individual characters are going to all this trouble in the first place, not just out of abstract principle but out of felt need. Too often, The Yid adheres to schematics.
“The Yid is darkly playful and generous with quick insights into the vast weirdness of its landscape ... We are most immersed in the past, I think, when we watch someone manipulate it. This might be, ironically, a lesson Stalin taught, too, but it’s still an apt one for readers to consider when engaged with such a fine enterprise as this one.
Mr. Goldberg has written a book that revolves about Stalin’s final blow against the country’s remaining Jews. There is evidence for this, but The Yid is a novel, not a heavily researched historical document. More important, Mr. Goldberg comes up with a team of Yiddish-speaking jokester-superheroes who are at the heart of his story, and who make it their mission to avenge countless acts of anti-Semitism, both real and anticipated.
Replete with imaginative action sequences, smart-alecky sidekicks and a quixotic conspiracy meant to right many years of wrongs, The Yid is a bracing fictional take on a crucial moment in history.
As the little group hurtles toward Stalin's death, Levinson and his 'ensemble of actors' improvising the last act in their deadly serious plot, Goldberg orchestrates a resounding finale to complete his dazzling tragicomic debut — all of it enhanced by the book's echoing refrain: 'Has it begun?'
...the plot, while substantial, exists largely to serve Goldberg's meditations on history and culture, the dark mystery of racial and ethnic prejudice, and the ways in which human comedy and human tragedy are often so intertwined as to be almost indistinguishable ... The Yid is as hilarious as it is appalling, and vice versa.
There’s a lot going on, which makes it hard to keep track of everything. The book’s more vivid sequences sometimes get lost in a tangle of bilingual dialogue, alternating formats, and shifting tenses.
