Though he just about manages to keep cranking out the jokes, he increasingly introduces less orthodox material, to which the audience responds with rising hostility. It soon becomes clear that Dovaleh has no interest in entertaining his audience – at least not in the familiar, rules-of-comedy sense. Why did Dovaleh want his old “friend” to attend? And why should we care about their relationship – or, for that matter, about Dovaleh’s routine? (Standup, after all, is an in-the-moment art even the best gags fall flat on the page.) The reader isn’t alone in feeling sceptical. Which explains his reluctant presence in the comedy club, performing the role of observer, of witness.Īt first, it all seems more than a bit mystifying. Despite having no interest in standup (“It’s really not something I relate to”), despite barely remembering his old tuition partner, the narrator agreed. But recently, out of the blue, Dovaleh contacted the narrator and asked him to attend this performance. (Both are now in their late 50s.) Actually, the pair weren’t really friends they merely attended the same private tuition classes. The narrator is an audience member, an ex-judge whom Dovaleh was briefly friends with as a child. (His opening gag is to express regret for not bringing a flak jacket: Netanya is evidently a place where protective cladding, of the soul if these days not so much the body, is advisable.) What follows is basically a long description of Dovaleh’s performance, in which every joke, every gesture, every reaction gets reported.

We first encounter Dovaleh G as he takes the stage in a comedy club in the West Bank-adjoining town of Netanya.

A Horse Walks Into a Bar is an attempt to wrench off that protective cladding, and to contemplate – if only for an instant – the unadorned truth. Humour, perhaps especially in a country like Israel, tends to have a protective role both individually and collectively, it helps to smooth over trouble, make life bearable.

Grossman has good reason to understand those limits: one of Israel’s most prominent writers, the author of such epoch-defining works as See Under: Love and The Book of Intimate Grammar, he suffered a scarcely imaginable personal tragedy in 2006 when his son Uri, a tank commander in the Israeli army, was killed in action in Lebanon.

A horse walks into a bar book review