What Does Stephen Tobolowsky Know About God?
Discussing the Ineffable with the Greatest Everyman Actor of our Generation
Whether you know him from Groundhog Day, Glee, Silicon Valley, Mississippi Burning, or The Goldbergs, there’s no denying that Stephen Tobolowsky is one of our generation’s finest character actors. His memoir, My Adventures with God, is a first-person exploration of the notion that we can chart the arc of our lives by mapping them to the books of the Old Testament. It’s engaging in the same way that the author’s acting is engaging: his brushes with the “trailing radiance” of God, the occult, and a spate of insightful rabbis, are conveyed to us with a winning combination of intimacy, drama, universal particularism, and down-to-earth ordinariness.
The stories Tobolowsky shares in his book coalesce to form one of the most genuinely optimistic Jewish memoirs ever published. He credits his disposition to his “relentlessly hopeful” mother. But there are other things at work, too: a connection to the fullness of life and an attention to the details that make it complete; a recognition of the holy in the everyday, but also an alert eye toward the truly divine (even if it’s only seen from behind).
Who better to contemplate the ineffable than the actor who has given us such a beautifully diverse…
