Dr Anjuli Pandavar is a British writer and social critic who holds a PhD in political economy. She was born into a Muslim family in apartheid South Africa, where she left Islam in 1979. Anjuli is preparing to convert to Judaism. She is one of the staunchest defenders of Israel and a constructive critic of the Jewish state when she believes it is warranted. She owns and writes on Murtadd to Human, where she may be contacted.
A review of The Trombone Man: Tales of a Misogynist by Ron J. Hutter (Lulu Press 2016
In the aftermath of Hamas’s rape, torture, mutilation, infanticide and femicide spree in Gaza on 7 October 2023, UN Women hit the depth of notoriety in their unwillingness/inability to even mention these events, let alone condemn them, in their official UN response, thus cementing misogyny’s place at the top of the word.
UN Women managed to legitimise modern history’s most egregious day of misogyny, negate themselves and give rise to the slogan MeToo, unless you’re a Jew, all in the same omission. The intricacy of this slogan lies in its fusion of the three elements: misogyny, Jew-hatred and Islam, the motivation for Hamas’s massacre.
Author Ron J. Hutter foreshadows this darkest of trios by seven years with The Trombone Man. The novel weaves an allegory that explores the rise of misogyny to official world pre-eminence through the foibles and mishaps of a complex, charismatic bumbler in a multicultural world driven by the madness of crowds.
The Trombone Man offers a wild ride through the therapy and “recovery" of Melbourne psychologist Dr Peter Kraus from longstanding “issues" with women, from which he habitually escapes into a James Bond fantasy universe, with himself as the famous secret agent, of course. After many years on the couch, with Dr Maxine Feinschmecker picking through his subconscious, Dr Kraus finally reaches the good stuff: his Oedipus complex. The trombone had something to do with it.
Acknowledging his problem, unfortunately, at the same moment becomes embracing it, owning it, and running with it, his way of confronting it. Dr Kraus rises from the couch a fully-formed misogynist, ready to go forth in battle for the cause, eventually, under Dr Feinschmecker’s questionable guidance, to rise to the top of the world, or at least, the misogynist part of it.
Along the way, Dr Kraus encounters, or re-encounters, a cast of characters each messed up in his or her own way, some more so than others, for whom his fame becomes the ticket to their ambitions. All except two: the high-school sweetheart, Jeanette, whose unrequited love is mutual and who is now adequately married with a family; and Marwan, a “Palestinian refugee" who, like the overwhelming majority meeting that description, never actually fled “Palestine" to seek refuge in a safe country, but merely descended from “Palestinians (Arabs)" already in those safe countries. Marwan, in his own simplistic way, wants to give to Peter, rather than take from him. That is not how Peter sees his new role.
Peter Kraus is an attractive and desirable man, having left behind an array of frustrated women pining for his love. Some of them were prepared to do something about it, none more so than his friend, Bev, who works exceedingly hard (in her own way) to get more out of him than the occasional benefit.
By page 24, if the reader has not realised it yet, it hits full in the face like a fist out of nowhere: “After a minute, Dr Kraus raised his hands and indicated to the crowd to hush. The hall was filled mostly with men, although he noticed four brightly-dressed women taking their places on the left.
He took the microphone and announced firmly, “Welcome to the first international misogynists’ meeting!"
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The crowd went wild with delight…
With a scene reminiscent of Hitler’s August 1920 “Why are we Antisemites?" speech, The Trombone Man sets off as an allegory of antisemitism, and a screamingly-funny one at that, lampooning its way through all the sacred cows of political correctness and multiculturalism, the seedbeds of a rehabilitated and global Jew-hatred.
From the very first page, the radio, the predominant mass medium by which that great evil spread since the 1920s, would be the leitmotif linking the antisemitism theme to the central character’s fondness for and familiarity with golden oldies. The songs on the radio provide a running (and mocking) commentary on his descent into the abyss, as well as an update on his status at key points in the plot. There are several other such artful devices, each a delight to discover, not least in Hutter’s witty wordplays in German, Yiddish and English.
Any new movement with global aspirations, naturally, needs its rising leader to go on a world tour, and the misogynist movement is no different. Dr Peter Kraus sets off on a very positive mission: to promote mens’ health. And so begins an outrageous romp through the prostate clinics of Europe’s most important capitals, during which we encounter such illustrious characters as Aisha, a cross-dressing misogynist in full, black burka, “secretary of the Sheffield branch," with H-A-T-E and L-O-V-E tattooed on his fingers, and who hails from “Gaza … Palestine"; Professor Glover; Professor Dr Dr Dr Dr Heinz Finger; and Professor Galina Petrova, “an overweight bottle-blond woman… Her thickset face had jowls resembling a bulldog. ...She wore a white coat that seemed too long." That was at the Golden Boy Health Centre in Moscow. And there’s more, much more.
Bev, Dr Kraus’s girlfriend, his foil, brings his problems with women into sharp relief, but-and, not to reveal too much-she helps the plot, but does not help the structure of the novel. The Arab “Palestinian refugee," Marwan, on the other hand, is hugely important in that his very existence encapsulates both Jew-hatred and its metaphor, misogyny. There seems a missed potential here.
When The Trombone Man was published, the present reviewer was reading for a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. Around that time, the mad world of political correctness and multiculturalism was reaching its plateau, and echoes of the communist “correcting" of art and literature reverberated in the writing world’s frequent demands for conformity with what was becoming the woke orthodoxy. Those familiar with history might recall the following:
“The talk given by Comrade Chiang Ch’ing [Jiang Qing] in the evenings of November 9 and November 12 at the Peking Forum on Literature and Art is very important. This talk analysed, on the basis of our great leader Chairman Mao's latest directives, the current situation of the great proletarian cultural revolution in the literary and artistic circles, and made important directives to the problems and missions of the great proletarian cultural revolution in the literary and artistic circles." (Jiang Qing, “Reforming the Fine Arts," Jiang Qing Internet Archive, 1914-1991. My emphasis)
In its own gentle way, The Trombone Man turns this “wacky world that seems upside down and inside out" against itself. It is a book not only to read, but to return to again and again.
(The Trombone Man: Tales of a Misogynist, by Ron J. Hutter, is obtainable at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Lulu and other book outlets.)