Here I Am: A Novel

Because of those texts? Destroy everything because of the arrangement of a few hundred letters? What did he think was going to happen?

“Anyway, Grandpa Irv used to do this thing where he’d give Max and me five bucks if we made a speech that convinced him of something. Anytime, anything.

Longs for his positive qualities to be universally recognized but never mentioned.

“Bull-merde. You know he had a bottle of Château Sang de Juif 1942 airing out backstage to toast France’s missing piece. The English, the Spanish, the Italians. These people live to make us die.” He stuck his head out the window and hollered at the honking driver: “I’m an asshole, asshole! I’m not deaf!” And then back to Jacob: “Our only reliable f

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda single-handedly revived Hebrew. Unlike most Zionists, he wasn’t passionate about the creation of the State of Israel so that his people would have a home. He wanted his language to have a home. He knew that without a state—without a place for Jews to haggle, and curse, and create secular laws, and make love—the language wouldn’t

Without love, you die. With love, you also die. Not all deaths are equal.

“Listen to yourself, Jacob. You think it’s all a game, because you’re only a fan.”

“My mother is why Kurt Cobain killed himself,”

(Unlike Jacob, she never gave an ostensible explanation for moving away from him, she never “forgot something.”

“I’m joking around. It’s an interesting name, that’s all. Not a judgment. You know you were named for a great-great-uncle who perished in Birkenau. With Jews there always has to be some significance attached.” “Some suffering, you mean.” “Gentiles pick names that sound nice. Or they just make them up.” “Billie was named after Billie Holiday.” “So s