In this short, somewhat whimsical tale, two very different men meet in a ward for patients with mental illness: a short Jewish man named Josh with a brown beard, and Nick,a big-bellied fellow with white whiskers. Josh was just committed by paramedics because he was found wandering in traffic after breaking up with his boyfriend; Nick is the former CEO of Myra Toys who used to travel frequently on business (\u201cI basically lived my life out of a big red sack,\u201d he says, in one of Strassberg\u2019s many winks at the reader. \u201cI must have carried that bag over my shoulder forever\u201d). Both men find themselves in the ward during the Christmas season, and they initially find themselves in conflict as they fall into arguments about metaphysics in the common rooms. Josh is spiritual and empathetic, assuring Nick that \u201cGod doesn\u2019t want our independence; he wants our interdependence.\u201d Nick, guessing that Josh is an unhoused person, is sharply intolerant at first: \u201cI know if you\u2019ve been bad or good, and you\u2019ve all been bad,\u201d he rumbles. \u201cMy tax dollars go to pay for the land where you illegally squat in your tents.\u201d In the slow, skillful development of the relationship between these two men, Strassberg plays on the initial gimmick of having Jesus and Santa analogues meet, and steadily broadens the story into a more ambitious meeting of the minds, drawing on elements of philosophy. Nick is predictably jolly, but Strassberg\u2019s greatest creation is Josh, who prays only for \u201can ordinary mortal life\u201d and is the source of most of this slim book\u2019s most memorable passages: \u201cPerfection is the enemy of the good, but for me, I\u2019ve met perfection,\u201d he complains at one point. \u201cAnd perfection has met me and just won\u2019t leave me alone.\u201d Very little happens in the book other than these verbal encounters, but readers will be too interested to notice. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this short, somewhat whimsical tale, two very different men meet in a ward for patients with mental illness: a short Jewish man named Josh with a brown beard, and Nick,a big-bellied fellow with white whiskers. Josh was just committed by paramedics because he was found wandering in traffic after breaking up with his boyfriend; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}