Dream of the Red Chamber, Wisse

I spent the week-end catching up on three issues of The Economist and an issue of The New Scientist and Eclectic Reading. I also finished the last quarter of The Dream of the Red Chamber. I suppose all cultures have these long, picaresque, comic novels written in instalments. I was reminded in a way of Don Quixote. Certainly the first half, I grew disenchanted with what seemed to me to be endless bickering and intriguing among the women of two affluent households. Then, in the second half, it was like a different author had taken up the pen. The psychology was more interesting, the plots were more complex, the human nature more believable, and of course it intended less humor, thank goodness. All in all it was worth the reading, however much slogging I did up front. I also just finished Ruth Wisse's Jews and Power, an essay on the political aspects of Jewish culture and modern history. I found myself straining to try and accept her views, since I feel strongly that the Jewish people have indeed 'been singled out by history.' But in the end, I concluded that this work was that of an extremist. I agree with her view that foreign governments would abandon the Jews to their fate, if it ever came to that. I agree that there is widespread anti-Semitism. I don't agree that most governments in the world today blame the Jews for their own problems. I think institutionalized anti-Semitism exists, but that the Holocaust has taught it to be more subtle than that, to go underground so to speak. And I confess that I am surprised that such views could be held by a fellow Canadian, a fellow Montrealer. I feel like we have grown up in parallel universes, however much pro-Israel I may be.