"My father, who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and, by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish"
About this Quote
The "peculiar trick" is doing two jobs. On the surface, it's a comic device - the set-up is interminable, the payoff withheld, then delivered in a language not everyone shares. The laughter, if it comes, comes late and comes selectively. Subtext: the punch line isn't just a joke; it's a border. Yiddish marks intimacy and exclusion at once, a private frequency within a public room. The long English prelude becomes a kind of assimilation performance, while the final Yiddish tag snaps the story back into its own community and history.
For Greenblatt, that mechanism rhymes with how culture works: power isn't only in what's said, but in who gets to understand it, who feels addressed, who is left translating. The father stages authority through delay, then claims the last word in a tongue that carries diaspora, memory, and survival. A critic looking back can't help hearing in that family gag a theory of interpretation: meaning arrives late, coded, and never for everyone.
Quote Details
| Topic | Father |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Greenblatt, Stephen. (2026, February 18). My father, who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and, by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-father-who-in-this-case-was-an-obsessive-90127/
Chicago Style
Greenblatt, Stephen. "My father, who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and, by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish." FixQuotes. February 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-father-who-in-this-case-was-an-obsessive-90127/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"My father, who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and, by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish." FixQuotes, 18 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-father-who-in-this-case-was-an-obsessive-90127/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2026.
