The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Published 2022 · 240 pages · 60,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is The Netanyahus to read?
The Netanyahus scores 54 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
- Cohen writes in precise, witty prose that incorporates academic terminology and Jewish cultural references. The vocabulary is accessible but assumes familiarity with mid-century American Jewish intellectual life.
- Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
- Sentences are often elaborate and sardonic, building through accumulated observation and wry commentary. Cohen's prose has the rhythm of an academic raconteur who can't resist digressions.
- Abstraction: 58 out of 100
- The novel explores Jewish identity, Zionism, and the nature of belonging through a campus visit that goes spectacularly wrong. The clash between assimilated American Judaism and militant Zionism becomes a study in irreconcilable worldviews.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- 1950s American academia, Jewish intellectual history, and the textures of campus life layer through the narrative. Cohen builds his world through accumulated attention to department politics, suburban domesticity, and ideological combat.
- Narrative indirection: 52 out of 100
- The story is framed as memoir, with the narrator looking back decades later. The reader must interpret how much he understood at the time versus what he sees now, and what the Netanyahu visit portended for Jewish history.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- The campus visit becomes symbolic of Israel's relationship with diaspora Jewry. The historian's manuscript becomes symbolic of how the past is recruited for present purposes. The snowstorm becomes symbolic of forces that trap and isolate.
- Ironic distance: 62 out of 100
- Cohen maintains substantial ironic distance from all his characters—the assimilated Jews, the Zionist zealots, the WASPish academics. The novel is satirical without being cruel, amused by everyone's self-deceptions.
- Resolution withholding: 52 out of 100
- The visit ends in chaos; the narrator survives to tell the story decades later. Cohen lets readers draw their own conclusions about what the elder Netanyahu's intensity produced in history.
- Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
- The novel follows a single extended episode with frame and flashbacks. The structure is accessible, building toward the climactic dinner party that brings all tensions to the surface.
How The Netanyahus is regarded
The Netanyahus holds a literary regard score of 47 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.