Book Fair: Sachs on Menaker

My sometimes friend (and sometimes sparring partner, and sometimes drinking companion) Roy Sachs, weighs at the Underbelly summer Book Fair. "My selection," Roy writes, "is The Treatment, by Daniel Menaker, a book that I read for the first time in 1996 or 97; then last month I saw a movie based on the book and decided to reread the book: the second reading was even better than the first." Roy elaborates:

This is a 269 pg novel (novella) so re-reading it required little effort. Daniel Menaker is or was an editor with The New Yorker and tells stories, probably because of this experience, more economically than the average story-teller.

The Treatment has at least three good interlocked stories going on simultaneously with an added humorous, even trenchant, insight into Freudian psychoanalysis (perhaps at its best?). The protagonist and narrator of the story is Jake Singer, an atheistic Jewish English Lit teacher at an upscale prep school (Coventry) on New York City’s west side; he is the analysand for Dr. Ernesto Morales, a Cuban ex-pat psychoanalyst, who is a Freudian, Catholic, investment connoisseur, and a wit. The wit is expressed with a slight touch of Spanglish.

Allegra Marshall is a rich beautiful widow whose son is a student at Jake’s prep school. She becomes Jake’s lover by the time we’re 80 pages into the story, but not before Morales gives Jake a push with remarks such as the following,…”Mr. Singer – 26 years of preventing yourself from healthy involvement in your feelings and your life. I swear to Christ if Marilyn Monroe came to you with no clothes on and a wet pussy, you would not know what to do with her…” and another push close by, “So if there is Mr. Weisenheimer a rich young widow making gooey eyes at you, why should you not fuck her, I ask you? Why should you not marry her when I come to think of it? Why didn’t you mention how she looked when you were speaking of her?”

Although always narrated by Jake the story seems to be told from the POV of the analyst and the Jake. There's a large digression into “The Imponderables”, which although not necessary for the main story, contribute a deeper understanding of what impelled Menaker to write the book which first concerns the unveiling of and healing of Jake’s private mishugas and secondly, life’s unpredictable twists and even more surprising outcomes.

Again, recall that for your convenience, we will be collecting all the Book Fair posts here.