The beauty of the Kaddish, to his sense, is that it’s non-specific. He can simultaneously mourn as many of the dead as he chooses.
Tyler at last, he doesn’t know why. He thinks that Libor has somehow made that possible. Unloosed something.
Tyler whom he failed as a husband, Libor whom he failed as a friend.
Yisgadal viyiskadash . . . It’s so all-embracing he might as well be mourning the Jewish people.
Not that he draws the line at Jews. Even Treslove gets a look in, a sideways glance of grief, though he is alive and well – as well as he ever can be – and presumably back working as a lookalike.
It’s from Hephzibah, with whom he is in frequent contact, that Samuel Finkler takes his cue. Her sense of incompletion, of a thing not finished that might never have begun, becomes his sense. He never really knew Treslove either. And that too strikes him as a reason for lamentation.
There are no limits to Finkler’s mourning.
A Note on the Author
An award-winning novelist and critic, Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester and read English at Cambridge under F. R. Leavis. He taught at the University of Sydney, Selwyn College, Cambridge, and finally Wolverhampton Polytechnic – the inspiration for his first novel, Coming From Behind. Other novels include The Mighty Walzer (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Kalooki Nights (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize) and, most recently, the highly acclaimed The Act of Love. Howard Jacobson writes a weekly column for the Independent and has written and presented several documentaries for television. He lives in London.
The Finkler Question Page 36