{"product_id":"nothing-the-same-everything-haunted-isbn-9780735279544","title":"Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted","description":"\u003cb\u003eA middle-aged Jewish man who fantasizes about being a cowboy goes on an eccentric quest across Europe after the 1941 Nazi invasion of Lithuania in this wild and witty yet heartrending novel from the bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eYiddish for Pirates\u003c\/i\u003e, shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMotl is middle-aged, poor, nerdy, Jewish and in desperate need of a shave. Since having his balls shot cleanly off as a youth in WWI, he's lived a quiet life at home in Vilnius with his shrewd and shrewish mom, Gitl, losing himself in the masculine fantasy world of cowboy novels by writers like Karl May--novels equally loved by Hitler, whose troops have just invaded Lithuania and are out to exterminate people like Motl. In his dreams, Motl is a fast-talking, rugged, expert gunslinger capable of dealing with the Nazi threat. But only in his dreams.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs friends and neighbours are killed around them, Motl and Gitl escape from Vilnius, saving their own skins. But they immediately risk everything to try rescue relatives they hope are still alive. With death all around him, Motl decides that a Jew's best revenge is not only to live, but to procreate. In order to achieve this, though, he must relocate those most crucial pieces of his anatomy lost to him in a glacier in the Swiss Alps in the previous war. It's an absurd yet life-affirming mission, made even more urgent when he's separated from his mother, and isn't sure whether she's alive or dead. Joining forces, and eventually hearts, with Esther, a Jewish woman whose family has been killed, Motl ventures across Europe, a kaleidoscope of narrow escapes and close encounters with everyone from Himmler, to circus performers, double agents, quislings, fake \"Indians\" and real ones. Motl at last figures out that he has more connection to the Indigenous characters in western novels than the cowboys.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn imaginative and deeply felt exploration of genocide, persecution, colonialism and masculinity--saturated in Gary Barwin's sharp wit and perfect pun-play--\u003ci\u003eNothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy\u003c\/i\u003e is a one-of-a-kind novel of sheer genius.\u003cb\u003eWINNER OF THE 2021 CANADIAN JEWISH LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] boundary-pushing [and] . . . very funny book. . . . There are few voices in Canadian writing as original as Barwin’s.” —\u003ci\u003eToronto Star \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“[Gary Barwin] proves again why he’s one of the most distinct voices in Canadian lit.” —\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Globe and Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[D]arkly humorous and affecting . . . the fantastic one-liners deepen the poignancy of the horrors. This inventive, madcap novel is a stunning testament to Jewish humor and survival.” \u003ci\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Barwin is a talented and prolific artist . . . and this novel showcases his signature style and strengths: acrobatic language bursting with puns, rhyme, alliteration and all manner of wordplay, madcap escapades, and a sprinkle of slapstick. . . . This wildly inventive novel plays by its own rules. In Barwin’s world, imagination is freedom, and comedy, courage.” —\u003ci\u003eQuill \u0026amp; Quire\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“This is a novel steeped in history and truths—and ingenuity. . . . An adventure story set in horrific times, this novel manages to be darkly funny and packed with wisdom.” —\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Globe and Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Barwin's second novel deserves the same attention as his first; it takes risks with an even more ambitious premise, is filled with delightful wordplay and poetic language and, like \u003ci\u003eYiddish for Pirates\u003c\/i\u003e, there is simply not anything else out there quite like it.”\u003ci\u003e \u003ci\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWinnipeg Free Press\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A fierce and funny horse ride through hell, told with brio.” —\u003cb\u003eYann Martel\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eLife of Pi\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A hilarious and life-affirming adventure, equal parts \u003ci\u003eSound of Music, Blazing Saddles\u003c\/i\u003e and matzo ball soup. This is Barwin’s tallest and deepest tale yet, a crackers modern Western that meditates (as it moseys) on compassion, kinship and the absurdity of atrocity.” —\u003cb\u003eSean Michaels\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Wagers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “This is the most wildly inventive novel I have read in decades, and Gary Barwin is the enormously talented wordsmith who has pulled it off! It begins in the nightmare of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania and travels across Europe and North America examining the plight both of Jews and Indigenous peoples. And through it all we find jokes based on cowboy themes. Jokes! What are jokes doing among these calamities? Displacing the horror, easing the way, making the tragedies, if not bearable, at least something one can talk about without incessant weeping in a world haunted by the past.” —\u003cb\u003eAntanas Sileika\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eProvision Yours\u003c\/i\u003eGARY BARWIN is a writer, composer, and multidisciplinary artist and the author of twenty-three books of poetry, fiction and books for children. His recent national bestselling novel, \u003ci\u003eYiddish for Pirates\u003c\/i\u003e, won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour as well as the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and the Hamilton Literary Award. It was also a finalist for both the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. \u003ci\u003eFor It Is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems \u003c\/i\u003ewas also recently published to much acclaim. A PhD in music composition, Barwin has taught creative writing at a number of colleges and universities. His prose and poetry has been published in hundreds of magazine and journals internationally--from \u003ci\u003eReader's Digest \u003c\/i\u003eto \u003ci\u003eGranta \u003c\/i\u003eand the \u003ci\u003eWalrus\u003c\/i\u003e. Born in Northern Ireland to South African parents of Ashkenazi descent, Barwin lives in Hamilton, Ontario.1\u003cbr\u003eVILNIUS (VILNA)\u003cbr\u003e July 1941\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMotl. Jewish cowpoke. Brisket Boy. My grandfather.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs usual, he was bent over the kitchen table, his mottled and hairy nose deep in the pale valley of a book, half-finished plate of herring beside his elbow, half-eaten egg bread slumped beside a Shabbos  candlestick.  His  old  mother  was  out  shopping  for  food while she still could.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo, this Motl, was he a reader?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf the world was ending, he would keep reading.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe world \u003ci\u003ewas\u003c\/i\u003e ending. He was still reading.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo, what was this book he had to read despite everything?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of the great westerns of the American frontier, of course. Even though he knew that Hitler adored them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The master race should be brave as Indianers,” \u003ci\u003eDer Führer \u003c\/i\u003ehad said, and sent boxes of Karl May’s Winnetou noble savage novels to the eastern front to inspire his troops—those same manifest destiny soldiers crossing the country with orders to kill Motl, his mother and all the other Jews.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDid Motl intend to do something about this?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYes. He would sit at the table, his shlumpy jacket turned up at the collar, his hat like a shroud of mice askew on his sallow head, and read.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWas Motl a man of action?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If parking his tuches all day and all night on a chair doing nothing but reading is action,” his mother would say, “he’s a man of action. Action, sure. Every day he gets older and more in my way.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhy was he still reading this western?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBecause Motl, this Litvak, this Lithuanian Jew, this inconceivable  zaidy,  my  grandfather,  this  citizen  of  the  Wild  East—that brave  old  world  of  ever-present  sorrow,  a  sorrow  that  had  just gotten worse—had chosen the life of the cowboy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe would be that hombre who sits on his chair and imagines being  calm  and  steady  and  manly,  speaking  only  the  fewest  of well-chosen words, doing only what he wanted and what he must under that vast, unpatented western sky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“And why not?” he would say. “Should my life be nothing but the minced despair and boiled hope of an aging Jew, too thin to be anything but borscht made by Nazis? I choose to think myself a Paleface chuck line rider of the doleful countenance, a Quixotic Ashkenazi of the bronco, riding the Ostland trail. Like my mother said  when  I  told  her  I  wanted  to  be  a  doctor,  ‘\u003ci\u003eMazel  tov\u003c\/i\u003e,  Motl. Nothing is impossible when it’s an illusion.’”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe would say, “What’s the difference between a Jewish cowpoke and beef jerky? It’s the hat. And feeling empty as a broken barrel.  Jerky  don’t  never  feel  such  hollowness,  least  not  by  the time it’s jerky. But the cowboy, the cowboy keeps riding. He don’t look back. Eventually, if he’s lucky, he too becomes leathern and feels only what jerky feels.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMotl. Citizen of Vilna. Saddlebag of pain. Feedbag of regret.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt  forty-five,  he  had  a  history.  As  a  Lithuanian  Jew,  he  was pickled in it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut though neither he nor his mother knew it at the time, something  had  changed.  Somewhere,  deep  down  in  the  overworked mine  shaft  of  his  imagination,  it  had  been  determined  that  he would set out on a perilous adventure, this time of his own choosing. He would get up on his horse and ride.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd he would have a child.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt his age.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And avoid being killed. Sometimes you have to save your own bacon, when you’re a Jew.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe next day, he went to the barber’s. Even a grown man will cave in to his mother’s demands that he groom if she won’t make food for him. Eyes closed, a Texas reverie floating through his mind like the scent of campfire, Motl lay back in the red chair and awaited his shave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But then:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Under a hot towel, a cowpoke can think big thoughts, but to act he must stand up,” he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe stood up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor a moment, the towel hung from his jowls, the Santabeard of a Hebrew god. Then it fell away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Barber,”  Motl  said.  “I  must  seize  these  last  days  while  the possibility of life remains.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  barber  said  nothing,  wet  blade  held  between  trembling fingers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The kabbalists speak of repairing the world, healing what is broken. It’s my time,” Motl said, looking round that hair-strewn palace of strop and whisker, that little shop of Hebrews. “Barber, I thank you, for I have learned much under your towel.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShave and a haircut.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e —Did the barber, Shmuel, expect payment?—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo bits.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDid  Motl  toss  him  these  two  coins  before  his  impromptu departure?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaving  had  neither  shave  nor  haircut,  he  only  waved,  then hightailed it into the bright sun of Shnipishok, that region of Vilna whose name sounds like scissor blades. He ran through its streets, feeling open to possibility and getaway.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDid Shmuel chase him with his blade?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLet’s say it was a close shave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis day, as the towel fell from his bristly chins, Motl saw beyond his scraggy self and straight into his crimpled yet resilient heart. He understood that it could become pink and new as the callow fundament  of  a  child.  How?  He  recalled  that  there  remained  a means by which he could become procreator and thus begetter. In this time of murder and loss, to make new life would be to make life new. It would be a salve for the broken world. He could say, both to his child and to himself, “It is worth being born into this world. It is worth being born.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd this fathering, would it involve the usual squirming ministrations known since our ancestors first began to beget?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt would not.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut  first,  he  had  to  retrieve  his  old  saddle  of  a  kvetching mother  and  get  them  both  the  galloping  Gehenna  out  of  the \u003ci\u003eEinsatzgruppen\u003c\/i\u003eing hell that Vilna would soon be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  cavalry  were  coming,  or—raised  as  they  were  on  Karl May—they’d more likely imagine themselves Aryan elves of the plains, Rhineland braves with bellies like six-packs of strudel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNoble cabbages.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eComing  to  lead  their  band  of  Lithuanian  Lakota  against  the godless  yellowstars,  locals  happy  to  have  the  excuse  for  an anti-Semitic whoop-up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Besides, if a boychik cowpoke was going to ride off in quest of new life, who else to bring but his mama?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut first, before he even retrieved this mama, we must go back nearly twenty years and speak of the family jewels because, in the end, that’s where all roads begin.","brand":"Vintage Canada","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302757519589,"sku":"NP9780735279544","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780735279544.jpg?v=1767733927","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/nothing-the-same-everything-haunted-isbn-9780735279544","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}