Episode 20: Allison Epstein
On Taking on One of Literature’s Most Notoriously Antisemitic Characters
Allison Epstein’s Five Books:
The Carp in the Bathtub by Barbara Cohen
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
Fagin the Thief by Allison Epstein
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Yehuda Kurtzer (host of Identity/Crisis), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
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Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Sarah Waring
Artwork by Dena Friedman
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions.
Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob’s whole world is his open-minded mother, Leah. But Jacob’s prospects are forever altered when a light-fingered pickpocket takes Jacob under his wing and teaches him a trade that pays far better than the neighborhood boys could possibly dream.
Fagin the Thief is a thrilling reimagining of the world of Charles Dickens, as seen through the eyes of the infamous Jacob Fagin. Colorfully written and wickedly funny, Allison Epstein breathes fresh life into the teeming streets of Dickensian London–reclaiming one of Victorian literature’s most notorious Jewish caricatures.
In our conversation, we’ll discuss growing up in a mixed-faith household, finding truth in horror fiction, and writing more diverse historical fiction. We also delve into the incredible coda to Dickens’ antisemitic depiction and how he attempted to account for his caricature of a Jew.
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Transcript: Allison Epstein on Taking on One of Literature's Most Notoriously Antisemitic Characters
Tali Rosenblatt Cohen:
Before we start the show, we have a podcast to recommend. Can We Talk, the podcast of the Jewish Women's Archive, features stories and interviews about gender and Jewishness. Nahani Rouse, Jen Richler, and Judith Rosenbaum talk with writers, artists, scholars, and activists about everything from Dr. Ruth's radical legacy to Ladino's resurgence to Jewish climate action. Their latest episode features Orthodox women talking about the challenges and triumphs on their way to the rabbinate.You can find Can We Talk at jwa.org/canwetalk or on your favorite podcast app.
Welcome to The Five Books, where each week we talk with a Jewish author about five books that are near and dear to them. My name is Tali Rosenblatt Cohen, and today I'll be talking with Allison Epstein about her new novel, Fagin the Thief, a reimagining of the life of Fagin, the infamous character from Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.
Allison Epstein:
I wanted to hold on to those parts of Dickens as Fagin that still spoke to me, but brush the film of antisemitism off the top and see what else might be in there if we weren't living in a story told by someone who hates this person. What would their life look like?Allison Epstein earned her MFA in fiction from Northwestern University and a BA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. She is the author of three historical novels, A Tip for the Hangman, Let the Dead Bury the Dead, and Fagin the Thief.
In this episode, we discuss finding truth in horror fiction.
I think there's a way to explore ideas in horror that's sometimes more difficult to achieve in a standard literary fiction novel. I think it comes at some of these really resonant, difficult topics, whether it's grief or it’s identity or it’s relationships. It comes at it in a way that's sort of sideways but doesn't sacrifice any intensity for coming at it sideways.
We'll also discuss why Allison decided to take on one of literature's most notoriously antisemitic characters.
As the world around me started to feel less welcoming to Jewish people, I think out of a sense of almost spite, I started to make my books more and more Jewish until I ended up, well, let's just really go for it this time and let's write the Fagin book I've always wanted and let's own that. In a time and place like this, it just felt like that's the kind of book that could be useful.
All that and more, coming up next.
Welcome to The Five Books, Allison. I am thrilled to have you here. Your novel, Fagin the Thief, is such a powerful, moving reimagining. I really have been thinking about it ever since I read it. And you took a figure who has long been flattened into a harmful caricature, and you gave him not just depth, but dignity and heartbreak and humanity. I just found the way you explore identity and survival and what it means to live on the margins, especially as a Jewish man in 1830s London, to feel so historically rich and relevant. So thank you for being here.
Thanks so much for having me and for those kind words, that's so nice.
Yeah, and I'd love to hear a little more about just what drew you to Fagin's story.
Yeah, I've been sort of problematically fascinated with Fagin since I was a child. I first encountered him through the Broadway musical version of Oliver! because that was much more child appropriate when I was seven or eight years old. My grandmother had a cassette tape that she would play around the house whenever we were visiting. So I always had the character of Fagin in the back of my mind, sort of as this lovable, rascally uncle, which is how he comes across in that show. And I just really locked onto him. And then as I got old enough to read Dickens and picked up Oliver Twist I remember feeling just a little bit angry and betrayed at how flat and upsetting almost the portrayal of Fagin in Dickens was. And it felt like this is a character that I've identified with for a long time and this is not the story that he deserves. But there was still something in that character of Fagin, even in Dickens' highly two-dimensional portrayal of it that still kind of caught my attention and I didn't want to give up on him. So I think I've been threatening to myself to write this book for many, many years just to give Fagin the story that I felt he should have had and didn't.
Book One: a Jewish book from childhood — The Carp in the Bathtub by Barbara Cohen.
I'm from a mixed-faith family, so my dad's side of the family is Jewish and my mom's side of the family is Catholic. And so we sort of had a split identity in that way, but we would always do Passover and other holidays with my grandmother who lived in Flint, Michigan. And so this was a story that she would bring out for us when we were small. It was one of the first Jewish stories that I could remember when you said a book that was formative to my young Jewish experience, I was like, remember that upsetting book about the fish in the bathtub? And I had to figure out what it was because it really left an impression on me as a child.
So for those of us who are listening who don't know what the story is, can you give us what you remember of the plot?
Yeah, it's a family living in a New York apartment building getting ready for Passover, two kids and their parents. And the mom brings home a live carp from the grocery store and keeps it alive in the bathroom, in the bathtub, for, going to make it later into gefilte fish for Passover. And the kids, of course, are horrified by this and they're determined to find a way to save the carp and make it their pet. And I think I had blocked out the ending of this book, when I went back to it I was like, and surely they saved the carp and it was their best friend forever. And that is, that is not what happened in the book. They, that is, it goes exactly into the gefilte fish you expect it would be. And it's sort of a lesson about you can't always get what you want in life. And I really apparently didn't remember that part until I looked it up for this podcast.
I don't think I remembered that part either. I just, I remember having visions of like all these bathtubs filled with fish, which was just such a horrifying thought to me as a child.
Yeah, for me it was, it always seemed like something that was very likely to happen because my older sister was the kind of kid who would find a duck in the yard and bring it in and have a little house in a shoe box. So if she ever did happen to find a carp in a grocery store, I was just thinking, yeah, we would keep that in the bathroom for several weeks until my parents had to figure out what to do with it.
Yeah, for sure. And so what was it like for you growing up in a mixed-faith household?
I mean, it's the only upbringing that I've ever really known, so it felt very normal to me. It was interesting to me in that the Jewish part of my upbringing always felt like the part that was more interesting to people and the part that was surprising to people. I grew up in a Midwestern town in Michigan where there were, I like to say there were two and a half Jewish families in my high school and I was the half. So it was always, you know, you're called on to explain things and you're the only one who's ever experienced a religion that's not Christianity. That was very common in middle school and high school for me. I think I was lucky in a lot of ways that the Jewish part of my identity was treated sort of as a point of interest rather than a point of difference. I didn't know that I necessarily wanted to be a spokesperson for an entire faith and culture, but it was also something that I was proud of in a way, you know, because I didn't want that to be erased and say, no, I'm only half Jewish. It doesn't count. It was always, yes, that's part of me as well. And if the only way I can show that to folks is to answer all of your questions every time Hanukkah comes around, sure, I will do that. I think I took a sort of pride in that rather than feeling kind of like an outsider because of it. It felt like this is something special, at least in that context.
It's a happy moment in history when that can happen. And did you have like a Hebrew school background to answer those questions or those questions were just things you knew from your father and your family?
Yeah, they were from my father. My grandmother was very religious, my father less so, so we didn't have a deeply religious background, but I had sort of the cultural elements and they would, know, any questions I would come home with, they would be able to answer those for me.
Were you always writing?
Yes, I was writing since the first grade when I made all of my friends sit around and read the terrible stories that I came up with during class. That's the only thing I've ever wanted to do, so.
And you mentioned you saw the Broadway version of Oliver Twist as a kid. Did you relate to Fagin being Jewish at that time?
I remember being aware. I don't remember it being necessarily a big deal. And I've thought about this a lot afterward. I think I must have been told Fagin is a Jewish character in Oliver Twist because in the Broadway production, it's really, really de-emphasized. I don't think it's ever explicitly mentioned in the script of the show at all. And it's sort of only alluded to by bringing out some classic Klezmer instruments for a few songs. It's really, really very muted. But I always remember thinking Fagin is, that's one of my characters. He belongs with me and I felt sort of protective of him since that first show. The other Jewish characters I remember best were the Rugrats from the Nickelodeon cartoon, which is maybe not a very highbrow answer, but it's a very true answer. That was a mixed-faith family as well. And I remember growing up thinking, yeah, that's how I would explain it to people. You know, the Rugrats, that's kind of sort of how it was.
I'm so glad the Rugrats existed for you.
I know, me too.
That’s great. That's great. Well, The Carp in the Bathtub is such an iconic, fun book, so I'm glad that you brought it up for us.
I also learned looking back up for this podcast, they make merch. You can buy a hat with a little carpet and a bathtub on it. And I'm extremely tempted to go get one after this, so.
Book Two: a Jewish book from adulthood — The Golem and the Genie by Helene Wecker.
This book came out I think 10, 15 years ago. It's a historical fantasy set in early 1900s New York City, sort of an immigrant story. And it tells the story of a golem named Chaba who finds herself in New York City, sort of coming to terms with her own identity as a not fully human creature in a world where magic is real but not common. And she encounters a genie named Ahmad and they sort of...have a romantic relationship that evolves, but also it's really a story of finding who you are and where you belong in a world that has sort of made room for you, but not entirely. I was a very passionate fantasy reader as a child. That was really how I found my way into books from the beginning. And this was the first fantasy novel I remember reading that had a Jewish character in it. And that just really felt exciting to me and it's what drew me to the book in the first place and then I sort of lost myself in the story of it and I was just delighted to find this, this corner of a world I had enjoyed for so long that felt like here is a place for you. You can come in this door.
I've read that Wecker wanted to tell a story blending Jewish and Arabic cultures and that she's Jewish and her husband is Syrian. So it's interesting that you were also drawn to this story of blending identities.
Yeah, there's something really beautiful about the way that this book handles love across difference. I think I didn't really put that together until you brought it up. This is, I feel like we're drawn to what we're drawn to and then the more we think about it, the more we realize, no, it all, it all does come back around. But yeah, the way that they're able to find common ground in who they are and what they believe is really lovely in addition to just a really exciting, wonderful story.
Yeah. And also in your other books, you've woven in queer love stories. You know, you've got historical fiction, Jewish characters, you're weaving it all in. Was this a book that kind of inspired you to talk about Jewish stories?
I think what it did is it gave me permission and I don't know that I needed permission necessarily, but I think I hadn't seen it done before and so it didn't occur to me that this is an aspect of me that should be able to be in these sort of stories. I mean, historical fiction especially has up until the last 10 years or so, it's been very male dominated because that's the way that history has been told. It's been very Christian dominated because that's the story that tends to get written in history books. And so I was always interested in the past, but I didn't necessarily see stories that looked like me in those novels. And The Golem and the Genie is one that does look like me in a way that I think made me take a step back and think, why am I writing stories about other people? I could be writing stories that feel closer to home.
And what do you think it is that draws you to the historical?
Part of it, I think, is my dad was a history teacher since the day I was born. So it's always that's always what our family has sort of done together. Every family vacation we took as a child was to some place with a historical plaque and a bunch of brochures. So it's always been sort of around. But I really think there's something special about being able to tell a story that connects the past and the present. There's a structure to it that I think gives writers paradoxically a lot of freedom. If you're working within the box of what's happened in the past, you're able to think about it in a new way and sort of bring a modern lens to it in a way that always feels like a great puzzle that I'm excited to figure out. I also just, I love the research of it. I love being able to get in an archive and spend as much time as I can learning the most specific facts I can think of. So it's really a genre made for me.
Yeah, especially because you do have characters in your books that are either real life characters or existing fictional characters. Does that feel like a constraint or does that feel like it gives you, I don't know, like some kind of framework to start with?
It's felt like both. I've loved having sort of a jumping off place and sometimes that can help force creativity in a way because there's not the whole world to explore and there's sort of a box that I want to stay in, so what's the most exciting thing I can do within that box. Sometimes it does feel like a constraint. For my first book, I was really constrained by what happened to the protagonist of my novel who is a real historical figure, I couldn't change that ending. And as an author, I was very frustrated by my inability to change what happened 500 years ago to make the story end the way I wanted it to. But I think a lot of times I like playing within a set of rules to see where I can bend them and where I can break them.
Is that why for your second book you—
Yes.
Yes.
That's exactly why. I finished my first novel where the main character has a very famous death in history. And I was thinking I have to do alternate history because I want to have more control over what happens. I want to be able to come up with my own plot. That was very much a reactionary decision.
Mm-hmm. And then you went back to Fagin.
I did. Yeah. I think I gave myself too much freedom and then I thought I need some constraints again.
Book Three: A Book That Changed Your Worldview — Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado.
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado is the book I have read probably the most times in the last five, six years. It's certainly the book I've recommended to the most people. I just fling it at everybody. It is a really remarkable collection of short stories that focus on female identity and violence and relationships and the idea of being embodied at all. And there's just certain stories in this collection that I had to put the book down and walk away because I felt, oh, does this author know me? Is she writing a story about me personally? It was really an exciting and frightening experience to read. There's one story in particular. It's called “Eight Bites”. And it's about a woman and her mother who have sort of been crash dieting together forever. And gradually, the woman starts to experience spirits of other women who have diminished so that now they only exist inside of clothes. And that was a metaphor that I think I needed to read at the time that I read it. And it's not an easy read by any means, but I really feel like everything in it spoke to me. And I feel like that's a book that shook me out of a mental state that I was in and invited me to think, you should take control of your life. This is, you should be the one who's deciding where you go next, if that makes sense.
Because of this idea of women kind of making themselves smaller.
Yes, that was something that I had been dealing with and thinking a lot about in that time in my life when I read it. I think it was a time when I wanted to be small and I wanted to be convenient for others and I didn't want my wants and needs to make anybody else's life harder in any way. That's something that I've always felt and always thought about. And this collection really in every story in there is asking, you know, what happens if you don't take up space? And what if you did? What would be the worst thing that could happen?
And maybe there's something about the way that she uses like the fantasy horror aspect of it that maybe you were able to hear in a different way than just kind of reading it as a paragraph.
Yes, absolutely. It comes at it as a sort of a body horror parable in a way. It's much less like someone is lecturing at you as a therapist if they're telling you a story about a horrible thing that happened sometime to somebody else. I think there's a way to explore ideas in horror that's sometimes more difficult to achieve in a standard literary fiction novel. I think it comes at some of these really resonant difficult topics, whether it's grief or it’s identity or it’s relationships. It comes at it in a way that's sort of sideways, but doesn't sacrifice any intensity for coming at it sideways. And I think there's something in that that I find really satisfying as a reader when it's well done. It's an entertaining story. It grabs you the way that a good television show would. It is popcorn entertainment in some ways, but it's popcorn entertainment in a way that makes you tackle some of the really deep, really upsetting parts of being alive. And I think that's a, it's a really impressive balance when it's done well.
Yeah, it's interesting that you say sideways, because in some ways, you know, the story that you're talking about, “Eight Bites”, it's coming at it so directly, you know, it's like such an explicit way of getting to the heart of the issue that maybe in a totally realistic world, you don't get there as quickly.
That's true. It is a very direct metaphor, but it still is a metaphor in some way. It's not a person who's, you know, checking into a hospital for eating disorder therapy. I think if I read that story, I would say that I don't want to read that. That is not me. That's not for me. It's a direct metaphor, but it is still, this is fiction. This is imagination. And I think it has that one step back from reality that makes it a little bit easier to sink into if it's something that you're resisting.
Yeah, that makes sense. And so you've gone back to this book and read it many times.
So many times, yes. I wrote a very passionate paper about it in grad school, which I don't think my professor was ready for.
Why wasn't he, what was it about that he wasn't ready for?
Oh, I think the page count was supposed to be six pages and I think I handed them 25. I had a lot to say.
Book Four: the Book you're Reading Now — Hungerstone by Kat Dunn.
As a wonderful little segue from our horror conversation, the book that I just finished last night is called Hungerstone by Kat Dunn. And it is a retelling of the vampire story Carmilla. So it's a historical horror set sort of in the late 1870s about a woman trapped in a sort of unemotional marriage where her job is to be the keeper of the house and the representative of the family in society and they find a mysterious woman on the moors who starts to teach her how to want things again. So really I'm outing myself as having a theme of books that I really enjoy.
I see the thread all the way through for sure.
Yes, absolutely. And it's bloody and dark, but also liberating for the central character in there. I'm a big fan of a vampire story. So this was a delight for me when I found out that someone had retold Carmilla. This was one I put on my calendar and made sure I got out to the bookstore the day it came out so I could get my hands on this one.
Book Five: the Author's Latest Book — Fagin the Thief by Allison Epstein.
So maybe you could just start by giving us an overview of where you entered the story and kind of your framing thoughts of how you wanted to tell the story.
Yeah, the entry point was something I wanted to be really deliberate about because so many people are familiar with the story of Oliver Twist, but I know not everybody is. I've had many people ask me, do I need to read Oliver Twist first before I pick up your book? And the answer is no, you do not. You'll get different things out of it if you do, but it's not required. So I wanted to make sure that I was giving readers, no matter what their background was, enough of a grounding in the Fagin from Dickens that we meet through Oliver Twist. And so Fagin the Thief starts in exactly the same place where we meet Fagin in Oliver Twist. It's Oliver sort of opening the door to Fagin's house and seeing him sort of crouched over the fire, cooking sausages with the poker, introducing the artful dodger. It's really the same actions in the same place. And that I wanted to then sort of branch out from that entry point and think, okay, how does a person end up in a place like that. What is the story behind that moment that we're all so familiar with? So chapter two immediately sweeps us back into Fagin's childhood. We go back about 45 years when he's six years old and we sort of meet the community that over the course of the novel will bring him back to the present moment.
And for those who maybe don't know as much about Fagin and how he's depicted in Oliver Twist, can you give us sort of the background of that?
Yes. I like to say that Fagin is one of the two classic antisemitic stereotypes in English literature. I think you get Shylock from The Merchant of Venice and you get Fagin from Oliver Twist. He is referred to as “the Jew” instead of his name, I think 340 times in the novel. And he's portrayed as one of the three central villains of that book. His deal is he brings in orphans off the street and teaches them how to steal and then sort of takes most of the money that they steal for him. And that's how he makes his living. So he's this sort of conniving, spooky figure behind the scenes of Oliver in his story. He's the one who sort of entraps him in a life of crime.
And all of the caricatures, right? Like he's ugly and he has the nose and...
He has the nose, the matted red hair. He speaks in this sort of slippery way. He's always lurking in the shadows. I think there's one aside where a character wonders, “did you have any parents or did you just spawn straight from the devil?” It's really not very subtle.
And what did you make of that? Or what were you trying to sort of amend in retelling it?
I mean, the idea of writing Fagin the Thief was not to rehabilitate Fagin into the hero of his own story. That wasn't the project that I was interested in. What I wanted to do is understand how a person might end up in the situation that Dickens paints for Fagin and what sort of a person would that be. Because the Fagin that Dickens writes is not a fully developed person, but there are flashes of a person in there. There's a personality in Dickens' Fagin. If you are able to sift through the antisemitism, there are some things in there that still hold my attention and still capture me about him. He has flair. He's smart. He's funny. He's interesting. He's different. And I wanted to hold on to those parts of Dickens' Fagin that still spoke to me but kind of brush the film of antisemitism off the top and see what else might be in there if we weren't living in a story told by someone who hates this person. What would their life look like?
You don't erase the antisemitism around him.
Right. It's something that he certainly would have faced at that time and my character still does encounter it. It's just not coming from the narrator's point of view. It's the world of the story. It's not the person in the story.
Yeah, I mean the history of the aftermath of Dickens' and the antisemitism there is pretty fascinating. I wondered if it was something you could share a little bit with us.
Yeah, it is really interesting. It's such a rare anecdote, I think, in literary history where we actually get sort of a coda to the problem. So Dickens published Oliver Twist serially throughout the 1830s. And at the time the novel was fully released, he received a letter from a Jewish woman living in London at the time who kind of called him out for his antisemitism in Oliver Twist. She wrote, you know, Dickens, you are this wonderful philanthropist who's calling for empathy for everybody, no matter their social class, no matter their background. And yet you have no sympathy in your heart for this Jewish character you've created and treated as a monster. Why is that? And she sort of asked him to his face, is that what you want to do? And Dickens didn't reply right away. I think he had some soul searching to do first. But the next time you see Dickens write a Jewish character. It's in Our Mutual Friend, which we can talk about the quality of that book all we want. But the character of Mr. Riah in that novel is he's the anti-Fagin. He is the humble, wonderful, lovely man who his only purpose in that book is to help others and be kind. And it's sort of remarkable to see Dickens sort of backtracking. He never issues an apology for Fagin. He never, you know, revises the novel to change the way that Fagin was portrayed, but the next time he has an opportunity to write a Jewish character, you can tell he's being really intentional. “I'm not going to do it the way I did it last time.”
Didn't he excise some of the Jewish references in the later chapters?
He did. Yes, I have strong feelings about that as well because what Dickens did in revisions of the novel is he just removed, I think, 200 instances of the word Jew from Oliver Twist. His solution to the antisemitism in his novel was to make Fagin sort of not Jewish or to minimize the amount of Jewish identity that was in the novel.
I talk about this a lot when I'm thinking about ways that people have adapted Fagin nowadays. I think that's also what I tend to see people do is they want to keep the interesting parts of Fagin. They want to keep that charismatic rascal who's, you know, leading children into a life of crime. They're compelled by that character. But in order to have that kind of interesting character, they mute the Jewishness of his character to the point where I've had people come to events that I've done around Fagin the Thief and they've told me, you know, my experience with Oliver Twist was through a movie or the stage show or some sort of adaptation. Until I read your book, I didn't know Fagin was Jewish. So I find that frustrating. I would love for Fagin to be able to be interesting and compelling and exciting and Jewish at the same time without being devolved into stereotype. And so that was, that's what I'm hoping to do in my novel.
Yeah, that, I mean, you certainly did in his childhood and you show his education and what that looked like in his life and how that got him into trouble. I wondered if you could talk about that scene actually with his mother and the rabbi's wife.
Yeah, I wanted to think about what Fagin might be like in the context of a Jewish community, because in Oliver Twist, he is the Jew singular, there is no world in which he makes sense in that novel. And so I had to imagine for him a world in which being Jewish was not remarkable. That's, you know, it's just part of who everyone in that community was. And then I had to take another step back and think, okay, how would this particular person interact with a community of other Jewish people? And it seems very obvious to me very quickly that this is not a particularly devout Jew. This is not a person who holds that part of his identity in any particular reverence. And so I sort of wanted to place him sort of in conversation with authority very early. There's a scene where Fagin is with his mother and the rabbi's wife in, very early in the book and the rabbi's wife makes sort of a disparaging comment about Fagin's mother and he pretends to be possessed and starts sort of spouting false religious texts at her just to get her to leave. And that seemed like the kind of Jewish person that Fagin would end up being. He is enmeshed in this culture but he is not how I've often seen Fagin portrayed in other adaptations, which is a very devout religious Jew who's just trying to do the right thing. That's not who he is. He is a problem. And I wanted him to be a problem sort of from the beginning.
And interestingly, you set it up that his father has also been sent to the gallows as a thief.
Yes.
And his mother really wants to keep him away from that life. And he has this very close and warm relationship with his mom.
Yes, that's sort of the one place in the novel where he was able to feel safe was with her because his mother understood him in a way that most of the rest of the world didn't. They saw him as a problem or an outsider or a troublemaker, and his mother saw him as, that's my kid. That's the way that he is, and I love him for that. Of course, she's also very aware of the world that he's living in and the kinds of futures that are possible for him in it. She saw what happened to his father and is of course trying to steer him away from having a similar fate himself. But there are only so many paths forward for someone like Fagin in a world like this. Despite her best efforts, there's sort of only one way for him to go.
And in playing with that in his relationship with his mother, you see that he's able to care and truly genuinely care for these other boys because of the care that he received. So it's that mix of the self-interest and the care I think that really makes him so interesting.
Yeah, I think he's very reluctant to admit to himself that he cares for other people, but he absolutely does. And the reader can see it even if Fagin himself can't see it. He's very quick to dismiss any accusations of, are you doing this out of the goodness of your heart? With, no, I'm doing it because it serves me, because if I take in these children, they'll be able to help me make a living. But there is throughout a sort of pull to give others the sort of care that he for a short time received and then wasn't able to going forward.
Yeah. And you talk about in the author's note the reason why you gave him the name Jacob as his first name. I wondered if you could tell us a bit about that.
Yeah, that was a challenge I had right away because Dickens does not give Fagin a first name. He's just Mr. Fagin. And so I had to think what kind of a first name actually fits. The reason that his mother gives for his name being Jacob in the novel is he was the cleverest of the patriarchs. He's a trickster. And in a lot of ways, that's the kind of energy that my Fagin is bringing to the world. He's very smart to his own detriment, and he can use others for his own benefit in a way that, you know, maybe you would judge is not necessarily the best way to do, but it does move him forward in his life. And after I had come to that decision, it occurred to me, didn't Jacob have twelve sons? Doesn't he have all of these children sort of following him around? And then, of course, that's sort of how Fagin goes through the world. And that's how we know him from Dickens is this father figure to all of these children who just look up to him as sort of the founder of the world that they live in now. So with those two things together, it just, it just felt right for him.
And you talked about in the beginning how you saw the play and then kind of had it in your head for a long time. What do you think was it that made you really want to go back to this?
That's a really good question because I do feel like it's been in the back of my mind for a long time. And I have noticed that Fagin the Thief is my third novel and they've all gotten more Jewish as they've gone along. My first novel was focused on sort of a Catholic-Protestant schism, so that was very unrelated. And then I wrote a Jewish character in my second novel. And I think as the... the world around me started to feel less welcoming to Jewish people, I think out of a sense of almost spite, I started to make my books more and more Jewish until I ended up, well, let's just really go for it this time and let's write the Fagin book I've always wanted and let's own that. In a time and place like this, it just felt like that's the kind of book that could be useful right now.
And what about it feels useful right now?
I think we're living in a time where people are very quick to take one aspect about you and use that to leap to any number of conclusions about how you believe and what you think and what you value. I've certainly experienced that to some degree in the past few years. And what I wanted Fagin the Thief to encourage people to do is to think beyond what Dickens does when he calls Fagin “the Jew” and expects you to then be able to project an entire personality and value system onto that character. I wanted this book to say, okay, yes, Fagin is Jewish, but I want you to sit with him as a person. And I want you to read this book cover to cover and get to the end and then know what he believes and what he thinks and what he values. You cannot get there from a single word of identity, you must sit down and know the person.
And in so many aspects of American political life right now, we don't do that. We take one flash of somebody's identity and we project an entire belief system onto that person. And so it's a somewhat ambitious goal for one book to have. I think it's, I'm hoping it's part of a larger conversation, but I do feel that the only way we're going to be able to sort of break down some of these walls that are separating us into camps and enemies is to see each other as people and not as shorthand for a system of belief.
I think you do that really successfully and I think part of it is it's easy to just sort of dismiss a character like this as being a caricature and just ignore it, but you know, by bringing it to life and like giving it so much more complexity, it does mean you have to engage with it. I wonder if you think about or how you think about the Shylock character, if that's something, you know, you mentioned those two and they are like the two that come up.
Yeah, I've always been less compelled by Shylock than by Fagin. And I've thought about it a lot. Why? And I think it's because Shakespeare thought he was doing a good job when he wrote Shylock. He's often held up in analysis of the Merchant of Venice. This is Shakespeare being empathetic toward a Jewish character. He's trying to show pain in this person's life. And he's trying to show a sense of empathy for this character. And I find it moderately successful at best, I would say, but it felt like a half-attempted character, whereas Fagin felt like this is open ground.
Yeah, and even just in the way that Dickens did respond to those accusations of antisemitism, like you almost imagine that he may have wanted to give it another shot or give it another go of how to depict Fagin in there.
Yeah, I will say I'm somewhat glad that he didn't. I think his second attempt, Riah, was... Nobody's writing books about Riah. No one is going back and thinking, Riah, my favorite character in all of Dickens. He is so watered down so that he could not possibly offend anybody, that there's really nothing in him to be interesting. And I think there's something sad about that too. I wouldn't hold up Fagin as a...a paragon of what you should try to be as a person, but at least he's interesting and at least he stands up on the page and makes you want to think about it.
Right, and there's an argument that that vision of Riah of being just kind of like a pushover is also just not a great caricature. You know, it's another caricature of Jews and also not a great one.
Yeah, I would say it's progress. I don't know that Dickens ever quite got to the idea that Jews are also just people. He didn't quite connect those dots, but he did try.
He did try. Well, I'm glad that you tried and I'm glad that you succeeded. And I think, you know, this book really just stands on its own in giving that complexity and nuance and creating just this heartbreaking character who again is not a good person, but there's so much there. So it was just really fun to read. Thank you so much for joining us today. This was great.
Thanks so much for having me.
Thank you so much for joining us today for The Five Books. Our guest today was Allison Epstein talking about her novel, Fagin the Thief. You can find a link to the book and all the others Allison discussed in our show notes. If you enjoyed our show, please be sure to subscribe and share with friends and family and rate and review an Apple podcast or wherever you listen. Rating and reviewing really does help new listeners find our show. You can also find us now online at fivebookspod.org.
You can email us feedback or author recommendations at team@five books pod.org. You can find us on Instagram at five books pod or on Facebook, the five books podcast. I'm Tali Rosenblatt Cohen. Our producer is Odelia Rubin. Editorial and website support from Sarah Waring. Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot sessions. Art by Dina Friedman. Thanks especially to the Jewish book council.
