Giovanni Cortez

Foreskin’s Lament

-First: Immediate reactions --- thoughts on the book? complaints on the characterization?
disappointments? Before we get into the book, i want to hear what you guys feel about
his style of writing? how does it differ from the other writers of spiritual auto and how
did that change the experience for you of encountering his struggles with God?

-Pose the question: what do you guys think Auslander’s spiritual temperament is? We
talked about Oakley as restless and lawless or DuPrau as sore...Auslander? --- he lives in
a violent metaphysical universe , the way he continously reuses certain
phrases(cocksucker, i believe in god its a real problem for me, come see what your sons
are doing, deleting the files etc/the way he quotes people, etc. – negotiating nature

JUMP INTO FIRST CHAPTER --- put things in perspective from his mind as a child and
then currently where it’s more presently:
-description of God, juxtaposition to Hitler and then the holidays (page 1)
-treatment of sarah, job, moses
-kindergarten song (page 2 and page 8) --- learning it as a child and then reusing it in the
context of him having to delete the personal writing piece he was working on so not to
“provoke” god --- hence the reappropriation of the song, god must know about my book
because he is everywhere, again on page 112,
-introduction to his son as a subject (page 5-6)
- “that would be so god” --- his impression of god is introduced here and he is very clear
and definite about this, god as cunning and guileful

FATHER: aside from the jewish community and God, auslander has this undying
bitterness for his father, two men atop this cruel and murderous speculative mindset that
asulander resides in. // thinking plainly how they are both referred to as “father”, senior
auslander molded this structure for an authoritative, malevolent all seeing tyrants that run
their respective firmaments. --- part of this is that it is troubling trying to place where
auslander’s anger stems from because while theres his lovely image of God, theres also a
profuse amount of self loathing and a really bad and aggravated emotional reaction to a
terrible father and in a way i think that beliefs are emotional reactions.
– the description of the father as a craftman (page 35) even parallels the tone of the
description of god on the first page, detailing this benevolent and ultimate being
via a very whimsical and almost fairy tale like tonality only to devolve and reveal
an inherent flaw
– (page 109) “maybe it wasn’t so much that my father on earth was like my father
in heaven, but that my father in heaven was like my father on earth.

page 27 --- god didn’t cause the holocaust but turned his head
--- “words have consequences. in the beginning was the Word and the Word was
the name of Lord and the second word...”
FAMILY TIES: (page 29) --- god severed the ties between auslander and his family,
though this was a productive space, “a distance that saved my marriage and my life”, fear
of birth of son reintroducing “the rats and pests of [my] past” --- a reference to the fourth
plague of egypt (plagues were the calamities from exodus that israel’s god inflicted upon
egypt to persuade the pharaoh to release israelites from slavery. set forth the exodus) –
“The houses of the Egyptians will be full of pests, and even the ground where they are”
...CHAPTER 13 w/ stock photos

NIXON / DAN AKYROYD IMPRESSION / defense mechanisms: his version of

“Noah”, doing an impression from TV to calm heated heads and save his family from
killing each other --- interesting that Auslander would take this duty on himself, even
Noah asked “why should i have to save everyone” (page 33) --- silence for sister or once
he starts spilling things to keep everyone from bouncing off the walls “the table cloth is
stained...nobody is bleeding” pg. 43

-“where does the holy come from” pg. 46 --- ?

- chapter 4, father building the ark --- relationship with uncles, other men of the
community, avrumi + auslander, etc...

- “the people who raised me will say that i am not religious. they are mistaken. what i am
not is observant...” (page 71) --- “i believe in god. it’s a real problem for me” --- he fears
god beyond the form you are supposed to fear god. he detest him and has deduced him to
a totally changed god from that of his family’s, a divide in between their graces.

- “traif” pg. 81

- chapters follow his gradual dissent into full blown transgression and immorality (in the
eyes of god). food (gluttony), into pornography/deena (lust)

- chapter 8: “spiritually groped”, “religiously fingered”... connecting his sexual

dysfunctions to his theological abuse.

- chapter 10: “...first time God tried to kill Moses” (page 142) ... the parallel between
moses’ first encounter with god’s wrath and the news of his baby being a boy. brilliant in
the way that while it is an angry account, it also showed a love for God in his hateful
fashion. he is so in touch with god and his methods / exactly how he handles his subjects.
--- auslander is like a cowboy in a quick draw, (a duel/ sport based on the romanticized
art of the gunslingers in the American Old West, using traditional single action revolvers-
--object is to draw one’s pistol as quickly as possible and fire as accurately as possible)
when it comes to relating his life to the way god will punish him and has punished others
before him. it only takes a moment and exemplies how easy talking and thinking about
this brutality comes to him

- page 149, “...the story of the old jewish lady in the concentration camp who
circumcised an infant just before its death at the hands of the nazis....” --- theres a
duplicitous nature to auslander recounting this story: one to show the absolute great
importance the tradition to jews...and then how also completely outrageous it was.
reading this in an auslander mindset, i can hear him criticizing the culture behind this
story, almost using it to comment on how self righteous the tradition is – “you have given
us a child, and we return to you a jew”.

-chapter 10--- “hunting season” and how the sound of bullets draw closer and closer as
the foreskin conversation carries on, “if i could get one of those vests to protect us from
god...”

-(page 153) the back and forth of unsolicited foreskin opinions + his notion of him
himself being a foreskin ---favorite part of mine. worked almost as a comedic relief on
the thus far dark and unresolving issue, while also offering a modern view of the foreskin
that was necessary to telling this story. these views on foreskin, sexually and actual
physical appeal, do exist and I’m glad he didn’t skip on this.

- (page 162) “she’d already heard about the pig”

-(page 167) “i spent most of my junior year in midtown. i went to the met, fell in love
with de chirico...i went to moma, fell in love with brancusi....i went to the guggenheim,
fell in love with giacometti” --- de chirico, metaphysical style of painting that sought to
evoke the hidden beauty or significance in ordinary places and objects of daily life.,
illogical and strange combination of every day objects, often unsettling --- brancusi,
created sculptures that conveyed the essence of his subjects, ending up most time in a
very free and almost manipulated form, though he argued it was not abstract art, but a
representation of its concealed nature,,, giacometti was a surrealist in the 30s and then an
existentialist after the war and he created a style rooted in alienation and like loneliness
and anxiety. at the heart of his figurative work (sculpture) was the motif of human
suffering.

-(page 180) real kelly and fake kelly is a lot like real shalom and fake shalom

-chapter19: the heavy, illustrious and in depth comparison between hockey and the nature
of god (leading moses to the promise land only to kill him, rangers to the playoffs) ---
also shows a sense of disillusion in how deeply engrossed auslander believes god is out to
get him personally. he doesn’t associate the outcome of a hockey game to the skill of the
players, but whether or not god is happy with him --- vain and egotistic?
--- also to a degree demonstrates the brand of religion with practicing in the city. this
multi-faceted world where everything is right beside us along with the gods we carry and
how sometimes they drip into each other , hockey and god for example

-(page 282) --- “...so lets keep this between us” --- issue is between god and auslander
and perhaps not so much with the larger jewish community. no one else can be involved
not even orli in a way so it feels difficult to comment almost
-page 289 --- “i thought about that expression, the one about god giving unto whoever a
son...how much it felt as if we’d stolen a son from him, ripped it from his hands”
-(page 290) google research fails and they have the doctor and not a mohel circumcise
their son “atleast their was no god involved”

-(page 292 + 294) --- “The moment my son became a Jew, was the moment I felt…that I
was not” --- “it was the foreskin that broke the camel’s back”

-auslander settled? never... page 302 “in the back of our minds, we know the search for
our promised land is not yet over, and may never be”, speaks to his relationship with god
as well,,, he uses woodstock as a metaphor for how he’s and everyone is still searching
and adrift in figuring things out

-(page 306) “...foreskin nation”