Witz

A reminder of the serious import of the literary novel, the novel as linguistic artifact.

[Cohen] reminds us what literature is: the self-conscious representation of the world using language.

The kind of ambitious, intelligent novel of ideas that will demand your full attention for 824 pages and repay you by rewiring your cerebral cortex in a fundamental way.

Cohen packs whole histories and destructions, maps and traditions, into single sentences. He employs lists, codes, and invented syntax with the sure hand of a visionary, his prowess and passion further emboldened by a boundless sense of scope.

The great lyrical sweeps of Cohen s writing must be applauded.

This anarchic energy recalls Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace, but what really distinguishes Witz is it language and Cohen's vigorous assault on the sentence as a unit of simple communication....a brave and artful attempt to explore and explode the limits of the sentence.

Entertaining, adventurous and delightfully absurd.

[N]ow that so much Jewish literature has been written and rewritten again in English, now that we have so many authors and classics, it is all the more rare and inspiring that Cohen, scandalously overlooked in America, especially by the Jewish literary community, continues to delve deeper and further with each book into an inherited terrain while making of that holy ground these beautifully uncharted territories with their own maps and legends.