Nathan Englander: Kaddish.com
photo credit: Joshua Meier
“We want a story’s most pressurized form. If someone’s gonna have a slice in your story, have them eat the whole pizza. Take the story to the point right before it tips over. That’s where the story should rest, on that blade.”
Nathan Englander joins me to discuss Kaddish.com.
Larry is the secular son in a family of Orthodox Brooklyn Jews. When his father dies, it’s his responsibility to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day for eleven months. To the horror and dismay of his sister, Larry refuses—imperiling the fate of his father’s soul. To appease her, Larry hatches an ingenious if cynical plan, hiring a stranger through a website called kaddish.com to recite the prayer and shepherd his father’s soul safely to rest.
“I want people to literally just laugh, laugh, laugh, cry. Like sit down and eat this book in a sitting.”