Bina Scharf - a chat about humor, perspective, and the facade of seriousness
Hey! Welcome to another issue of Frum Books, home of everything related to frum publishing. Much of frum publishing is heavy with an air of intellect. My conversation with Bina Scharf, author of Rocky Rhodes and The Rhode Not Taken, was a refreshing spotlight on easy and humorous fiction.
How do you define a good read?
I read for recreation. I don't want to read a book that makes me feel like I'm doing a homework assignment, I just want to relax and enjoy. They say a person should write the type of book they'd like to read, and I enjoy reading books that make me laugh.
What turned you on to reading and writing?
I always loved to read. I remember as a kid finishing a scary book in the wee hours of the morning, and being afraid to leave my room because I was worried that I would meet a character from the book in the hall who would wiggle her ears and turn me into an apple. In my second book, Rocky burns the noodles because she was engrossed in a book. That was me as a kid, reading while the noodles were burning.
I would never have imagined myself as a writer. In fact, I didn’t plan on publishing Rocky Rhodes. I wrote it for my own amusement and it stayed in my closet for several years. Around that time, my husband was finishing his Master's in psychology and pointed out that the characters bring to life a variety of real-life dysfunctional attitudes and relationships, which people relate to and would enjoy.
For example, when Rocky wins the grand prize at the Hachnosas Kallah Matan Beseser Chinese Auction, and her friend Dina thinks she got engaged without telling her and gets insulted, Rocky texts her, “still single, no worries :)”. Her friend should be happy for her, but obviously feels worried that Rocky is getting married and leaving her behind. My husband encouraged me to publish it. So I finally listened to him and it was quite well received. And then I wrote the next book, The Rhode Not Taken.
Did you have a different experience writing your second book knowing that it was going to be for a published audience versus the first one?
If I knew anyone was going to be reading the first one, it would have been a very different book! Since I got so much positive feedback it gives me the confidence to continue being myself.
Why do you think it's so hard to write quality humorous fiction?
Probably because most people have a terrible sense of humor! But certainly, it's not as hard as it seems. It means you have to look at life from a certain perspective. Let's say you're driving down the road and you stop at an intersection. You just had your winter tires changed to summer tires, and the technician apparently didn't tighten the bolts properly. And your wheel goes rolling off your car, across the intersection. You then jump out of your car just in time to catch it when it circles back to you. The question is, was that funny? The people who were at the bus stop when this happened to me were laughing hysterically, they thought it was funny. It's just a matter of perspective, seeing things in a way where it could be humorous. That's what makes great material for a book, even when things aren't so funny.
Do you feel like you tapped into your own experiences throughout your books, pulling from stories you’ve had?
Not intentionally. Definitely the longer one lives, the more life experience they have. Years ago when I was taking a taxi, I didn't have enough money to tip the cabbie who happened to be Russian. He said to me, "You can't put a thank you in your pocket". I loved that expression, and I guess I just remembered it. It doesn't mean I'm writing about my life, but some things definitely crept in.
Another example is the Rebbetzin’s ‘birdwatching’ outside her machetaniste’s window. I got the idea for this from reading a letter to the editor written by a lady who lived in a development. She complained about her neighbors’ husbands going to a late 8 a.m. shacharis. One advantage of our lifestyle is that many of our communities are close-knit and that every yid cares for every one of our brothers. A corollary of this is that we sometimes are overly involved in each other’s lives and overly aware of what our neighbors are up to.
Often, a book’s humor is a reflection of the author’s personality, with a specific style. While your books have a “brand”, you managed to retain different “humor personalities” for each of your characters. How did you do that?
I started off with Rocky, then I thought, how would someone else interact with her? When developing the character of Mrs. Rhodes, I thought, what would somebody who is desperate to marry their daughter off say to their daughter? And what sort of person is Mrs. Rhodes married to? I imagined the characters as real people.
What’s funny about the book isn’t the characters’ good sense of humor. You don't read the book and say, Oh, wow, Rocky is so funny because she says funny things. It is how the storyline intersects with the character’s personality that brings laughs from the reader’s perspective.
Was the segmented first-person style related to this, having experiences come from different personalities?
First of all, when you write in first person, it's more intimate; there's no barrier between the reader and the character in the book. There’s also an irony in how different characters see the same event from different perspectives. I can't discuss the same event in such depth with each character without boring the reader, each segment has to be short.
Also, the short chapters give me a broader audience because it's liked by different people. For example, my mother likes to read the beginning of a book and then the end of a book. And then if she likes it, she'll go back and read the middle. So this is the type of book you could open anywhere and enjoy it piecemeal, or you could read the book as a whole.
And the other thing is, nowadays, people have much shorter attention spans. I discussed this a little bit in my upcoming book, “Bumps in the Rhode” - people are overloaded with sound bites. So I feel my books cater to our distracted society of today. If you look at the old classics they have people talking for pages and pages. We don't have that nowadays, we can't handle that.
It seems like frum society has a general impression that seriousness equals intelligence. You obviously have an opposite opinion. What do you want people to know about humor that might change their minds about the way that they see humorous people?
Actually, there is evidence that those with good senses of humor have higher IQs. I think many frum people equate lightheartedness with lightheadedness. They think they always have to be grim and serious about life. And I want people to know it's not an aveirah to laugh at our flaws. Through making fun of ourselves we could grow as people because we can identify these areas which are the most incongruous.
I used this in the book. Avrumchik is a serious ben Torah who has no bein adam l'chaveiro. He orders a meal for himself, but only a drink for Rocky. The Rav is overly involved in gashmius. He's a kollel yungerman, but he's more into the kugel than the Kollel. The Rebbetzin is overly vain and always worried about what people are thinking of her. She tries to make her husband into a Rav. And Rocky's problem is that she's part of this dysfunctional family and has difficulty separating her self-image from her circumstances.
I don't understand why there isn't more kosher Jewish humor out there. Because then people turn to less appropriate outlets. I thought it was hilarious when I heard a prominent person saying how he listens to comedians on the way home from levayas to keep his spirits up. It’s really a shame that people have to turn to less appropriate content.
What do you do during your writing process to make sure that others will appreciate your humor and this is not just something that you personally are finding funny?
As I mentioned earlier, I didn't write for an audience. So, I didn't really have to worry about that. I was pleasantly surprised to hear from secular people who read the book that they found it funny, too. I guess every pintele yid has a pintele ultra-orthodox sense of humor.
The humor of your book specifically has a distinctly Yeshivish style, where not everybody would be familiar with it or even understand the humor. Do you feel like being more specific narrows down the audience of people who would appreciate the book?
Well, I am going with a Jewish publisher, which right away is going to narrow my audience. I'm part of the Yeshivish culture, this is who I am. At the same time, I don't feel like I need to be an apologist for our community's flaws. Apologists see flaws as a threat, people who write satire see it as an asset. And this is how we could better society. A person who doesn't recognize their faults is not able to grow.
How do you think that you would get along with Rocky in real life?
She's pretty high strung so I'm not sure.
When you write humor, you have to exaggerate whatever you’re writing about. So I try to make my characters into caricatures of people. Because in real life, hopefully, people don’t act that way. That being said, I’m sure there are people out there like that. I can't say I hope to meet them though.
Favorite frum fiction?
I don't know if they're popular nowadays, but I liked reading Marcus Lehmann's books. I enjoyed the Eva Vogiel books too, especially The Four Seasons of Golda Mirel. And I liked Tzippy Caton's Miracle Ride - it's a heavy topic that she deals with in a very light-hearted way.
I enjoy reading other people’s humor because everyone has a different sense of humor, and I find their perspectives refreshing. It’s like when someone tickles themselves they don’t laugh. But if they get tickled by someone else, then they laugh.
What's coming up next?
The next book in the series is titled, ”Bumps in the Rhode”. Rocky has to deal with her parents aging, struggles with her teenage son, and a cell phone preoccupation. The Rebbetzin tries to help, in her usual meddlesome way, and enlists the Rav. The Rav gets tired of being pushed around by his wife, and the Rav and Rebbetzin must redefine their relationship.
I'm also writing a dessert cookbook, called, “Rocky Rhode a lâ Mode”. It can be enjoyed by those who like dessert but lack a sense of humor, or by those with a sense of humor but don’t like dessert. It’s for people who take their dessert seriously framed by humorous segments by the different characters - pseudo-halachic pshetlach from the Rav, Rebbetzin's Rhodes advice columns, and Rocky's thoughts on different Yomim Tovim.
Did you have to adjust the characters' personalities in the coming books to account for maturing a bit?
That goes back to the question you asked me earlier about how I keep people’s personalities separate? It's definitely going to be more challenging to keep the integrity of Rocky’s character as she ages because she will become similar to her mother. But a point that I will want to bring out is that like it or not, at some point we realize that we have morphed into the last person we ever wanted to be: our mothers. (Shout-out to my mother!)
What should readers read next after enjoying your books?
Pride and Preference by Barbara Bensoussan