Joking apart | 24 November 2016

A horse walks into a bar.… David Grossman takes the opening line of an old joke for his title, which could be a signal of comedy to come; and indeed he strews his novel’s pages with punchlines — good, bad-taste and groan-worthy. But this is gallows humour at its darkest: Grossman beckons us into a basement comedy club in an Israeli town, and uses the world of stand-up to explore not jokes but the nature of guilt.

We stick with the comedian Dovaleh G from the moment he stumbles on to the stage till he exits two hours later. There are Israeli in-jokes — ‘How do paratroopers commit suicide? Jump off their ego onto their IQ’ — but long before the end, laughs have faded and applause has given way to hostility. Loyal fans expecting an evening of entertainment instead watch a man fall apart as he looks into himself and his past: the father who conflated tough love and punishment; the Holocaust-survivor mother with ‘vein embroidery’ on her wrists — reminders of suicide attempts. She met Dr Mengele — ‘a short consultation’, Dov observes dispassionately; ‘No second opinions.’ The horrors are left undescribed.

The gig is a confessional; a memoir by other means, as Dov shows us the scrawny kid who learned the trick of walking on his hands, creating a topsy-turvy world to run away from trouble, and on one crucial day, unendurable torment. At 57, publicly picking the scab of the past, here he is, walking on his hands again.

There’s a narrator figure, a district judge who knew Dov as a boy. He watches, mortified, as Dov drags the audience into the dangerous territory of his personal hell. Dangerous in more ways than one: the book’s structure provides the full, confrontational stand-up experience.