So on the list of 2008’s top provocative titles, are you going for number one or two?
It’s funny, when I’d tell people the title, I’d get smiles and laughs from Jewish people—there’s an easy understanding of where a phrase like that might come from. It has a resonance for Jews but also a wide application.
I guess your publisher was cool with it as well.
I think my publisher understood it was kind of a winking title. If they hadn’t, I’m not sure how much to the mat I’d have gone for it. We do live in this hyper-saturated, hyper-sensitive world where the paradox is that the only way to get noticed is to say or do something provocative.
Your novel was partly inspired by your grandfather and partly by your hip-hop roots. How do you combine those into a writing process?
My process generally involves sitting down as soon as my coffee’s ready in the morning a.m. and writing for as long as I can. For novels, endurance is a factor—how long you’re able to sit that chair. If I’m really cranking, I’m done by early afternoon. I also tend to focus on how much I’m not getting done. I’m a displaced Red Sox fan living in California so my Internet connection—well, you know.
The novel tackles ethnic identity along with nationality. Following Obama’s speech on race, it seems like great timing.
My race and identity has been a through-line in my work; my last book was a satire that dealt with it in large, absurd terms. See, any significant dialogue about race has ground to a halt in my lifetime, so it’s incredibly gratifying to see Obama raise it. What I’m trying to do in "The End of the Jews" is look at people in a very intimate setting, not just as a cultural dynamic about populations of people, not just as something we can reflect or understand through facts or statistics, but as what affects one man’s relationship with another. Obama’s had the courage to articulate a personal honesty around race that we seldom see in politics.
You’ve been referred to as a “hip-hop novelist." What does that mean?
This is something I’ve thought a lot about. The notion of a hip-hop novel has taken hold lately because the publishing world is 10 years behind everything, and it’s come to signify something young, urban and black—or two out of three. But that’s surface-level. I look to the fundamental aesthetic pillars of hip-hop, a culture I was a part of more than any other—more so than Judaism, more so that any artistic or political movement. To me it’s the most honest: I’m white, and I had to work through a lot of issues and really confront them.
What's the appeal of hip-hop to you?
I look at the foundation moments of hip-hop: the impulse on the part of young black and Latino kids in the Bronx where art and music programs are cut, where the community is totally marginalized and denied access to power, where these impulses are channeled in brilliant, audacious ways. Most of my characters aren’t hip-hop; most the action in my book takes place before it was invented. But this notion of mixology, of community, of inventiveness and resourcefulness, plus the cadences of the prose and investing marginalized people with power—that’s the hip-hop novel.
A launch party for Adam Mansbach's new book, "The End of the Jews," will be held at McNally Robinson Books on Thursday, March 27th at 7 p.m.
