CAMP JEFF

Sacred cows of all sorts are skewered by Reich in a broad satire of contemporary mores.

Gershon Gordon,  a “world famous literary powerhouse and public intellectual,” is a resident at Camp Jeff, a reeducation center for those who have found themselves implicated by the #MeToo movement—or caught in the hashtag, as Reich wryly puts it. The camp is named after its benefactor, the “good” Jeffrey Epstein, a cosmetics tycoon who refuses to let his name be ruined by the infamous bearer of the same name. Gershon’s own name is a refinement of his given name, George Gordon, also the name of Lord Byron as well as a Protestant who led riots against Catholics mentioned in Dickens. Slippery nomenclature is just one of many verbal sleights of hand Reich plays in her densely packed narrative of Gershon’s attempts to game the systems at Camp Jeff for his own purposes. The primary therapeutic method at Camp Jeff is Zoyaroyan Psychoempathy—named after one of at least three Zoyas playing a part in the novel—which allows Reich to take aim not only at sexual predators but at purveyors of sketchy self-help models. As the madcap plot unfolds, Reich explores themes of antisemitism, Jewish culture in America, and misogyny. At several points along the way to the novel’s apocalyptic resolution, she takes a deep dive into Talmudic studies, too. With the book taking place just before and during the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the mass hysteria and uncertainty surrounding that disruption comports nicely with the general tone of upheaval as old rules give way to the new. Stereotypes of many sorts—the stern nurse, the mousy female academic, the pederest priest—are present in the cast of characters Reich uses to make her point.

Reich comically airs out many grievances.