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November 12, 2004/Cheshvan 28 5765, Vol. 57, No. 11
Braff shares the 'unthinkable'
DEBORAH SUSSMAN SUSSER
Staff Writer
Author Joshua Braff has the open, thoughtfully shaggy look of someone you'd be happy to sit next to and talk with on a long flight. Cindy Dach of Changing Hands Bookstore, who developed the First Fiction tour that brought Braff and four other debut writers to Monti's La Casa Vieja Restaurant in Tempe last month, had the opportunity to sit next to Braff on a long flight. She pronounced him "a mensch."
A debut novelist at the relatively late age of 37, Braff is a grownup (married, with two children) who can pass for younger. In fact, the protagonist of his book "The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green" (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $22.95 hardcover) is 10 years old when we meet him and 15 when the book ends.
What lifts this novel out of the Young Adult category are its wise, sad heart and its raw truthfulness. Braff doesn't shy away from describing Jacob's teenage interest in his own body as well as the female form, and especially how the two intersect. Jacob carries on a steamy "is-it-or-isn't-it-sexual?" flirtation with Megan, the live-in baby sitter, and Braff writes bawdy, moving passages - some of which he read at Monti's - in which Jacob puzzles over the nature of his connection with Megan and the strange new sensations he's experiencing.
Like Jacob, Braff grew up in New Jersey, attended yeshiva, and then made the transition to public school. Braff is quick to point out that "Unthinkable Thoughts" is a work of fiction - which will come as a relief to anyone who's acquainted with Jacob's narcissistic, pathetic monster of a father. But it's more closely based on his own life than his first effort, a novel he wrote when he was fresh out of a graduate program in creative writing.
"It was actually from the point of view of a woman, 21 years old," Braff says. "I'm very turned on by the human condition, which to me means relationships. And what I wanted to do is write about a young woman who grew up with a father who was more than somewhat distant."
On the strength of his first manuscript, Braff got an agent in New York. The agent shopped the manuscript around, and word came back that while Braff clearly had talent, his was "a quiet book." The editors advised Braff to make more of a splash as a debut novelist, and he, wisely, listened.
"This was going to be a fast book: you would drop in and you would turn pages quickly. And I wanted to just keep it moving with dialogue and pace and pathos and humor and sexuality and definitely Judaism."
The overwhelmingly positive response to the book from Jewish media and Jewish community centers around the country came as a surprise to Braff.
"I didn't set out to write a Jewish book," he explains, "and I didn't know there was a Jewish Book Council and I didn't know that November was Jewish Book Month. ... I definitely didn't think that I was writing a derogatory book about Judaism, but ... it's the point of view of a boy who is frustrated and somewhat angry."
When the Jewish Book Council invited Braff to speak, he wasn't sure what to expect. "For three minutes I got up and said this is who I am and this is what the book's about. And I would ultimately get invited to a great deal of these JCC events. I've been very supported - very supported. Hail the Jewish Book Council."
Braff has been compared by critics to several great Jewish-American writers, including Philip Roth. "It's surreal," Braff says of the Roth comparison. "To me, I stay grounded by feeling that I think that comparison comes because the book takes place in New Jersey, it's about Jewish people, and there's sexuality involved. And that's a lot of what he was doing. But it's quite an honor, and it's hard to really believe."
Braff's two brothers (yes, one is Zach, of "Scrubs" and "Garden State" fame) also write. Braff describes the relationship among the three of them as "extremely supportive."
Zach recently bought the rights to the children's book "Andrew Henry's Meadow" and is working on a movie with oldest brother Adam. "I would say in the next two summers you'll see (it) as a big blockbuster Goonies-type kids' movie," Braff says.
And Braff has "broken new ground on a new piece," which he'll get to work on when the current book tour is over. "It's just in notebook form," he says, "which is how I begin everything." The subject of his new work?
"I would say human condition again," he allows. "But for now, just that."
Contact the writer here
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