The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family

Yes, those Netanyahus—sort of! The Netanyahus is, on its face, a novel about Ruben Blum, an economic historian and, as the story takes place at the end of the 1950s, the only Jewish professor at small-town Corbin College. And for its first half it is a more-or-less-well-behaved campus comedy of Jewish assimilation and petty academic maneuvering. Then Benzion Netanyahu, a possible professorial hire who Blum, as a fellow Jew, has been asked to host and vouch for, arrives with his wife and three incredibly badly behaved children, including 11-year-old Benjamin, and chaos, to say the least, ensues. Or, to put it in Philip Roth terms, a book that read like Goodbye, Columbus suddenly turns into Portnoy's Complaint. Is this an authentic portrait of a "very famous" Jewish family? (Cohen claims he based it on an actual incident.) An allegory of some kind? An impish goad? All I know is it was entertaining, funny, and provocative, and I might need to read it another time or two to decide.