The Inventor

This epistemological romp between the Borovsky brothersEmmanuel writing from every compass point on the globe, Boris from staid Londonrevolves around Manny's super-computer, a machine for the redemption of the world. But he's broke, having sunk several fortunes in such technological doo-dads as a pair of electric scissors and a radio hat, and he touches his rich doctor-brother for a loan. He needs, as he says, investors who believe in him, not necessarily in his machine, and although Boris sends him a couple of thousand pounds, Manny seeks out other Jewish visionaries from Reykjavik to Jerusalem. They're an astounding bunch, wallowing in wealth: a new messiah or Divine Will; a bisexual fop who simply wants to live forever, fornicating; a banker who dreams of developing kosher pigs, edible by both Jews and Muslims; and a maker of ladders who plans to put a Star of David in orbit. In the meantime, Boris is having his own problems with his fifth wife, Oksana, a Jewish Eskimo, who exhausts him sexually in her fervor for a child and eventually settles for a dog. This animal literally drives Boris mad; he shoots it and is forthwith taken to a sanitarium. In a rather abrupt ending, Manny engineers his brother's release and, by dint of a whopping sum, his freedom from Oksana. He himself returns to the Cayman Islands, to cultivate his garden with a native woman, who also dreams of a new messiah, this time black. This slim, pithy text by the author of Travels to the Enu cleverly depicts a madcap world that, the author seems to suggest, may be the true state of the universe. (August)