God's Eleventh Jew:
Jewish American Humor
in American Literature and Film
"Heinrich Heine, along with Ludwig Boerne, is credited with the invention of the German feuilleton, the casual humorous monologue in which Jews have excelled, from the Viennese cafe wits to S.J. Perelman and Woody Allen. Heine helped to transmit to Jews who came after him the pertinence of irony, the prism of double and multiple meanings simultaneously held and accepted. It is the natural response of a people poised between two worlds: one, the matrix of ghetto and shtetl--to which they can no longer return; the other, the civil society of the West--in which they could not be fully at ease." [Stephen J. Whitfield, "Laughter in the Dark: Notes on American-Jewish Humor" (1978), rpt. in Pinsker, ed., Critical Essays on Philip Roth, p. 196.
"The jokes made by foreigners about Jews are for the most part brutal comic stories in which a joke is made unnecessary by the fact that Jews are regarded by foreigners as comic figures. The Jewish jokes which emanate from Jews acknowledge this too; but they know their real faults as well as the connection between them and their good qualities . . . Incidentally, I do not know whether there are many other instances of a people making fun to such an extent of its own character." [Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton, 1963), pp. 111-12.]
Commenting on his Jewish and American origins, Saul Bellow suggested that "The only life I can love, or hate, is the life that I--that we--have found here, this American life of the 20th Century, the life of Americans who are also Jews. Which of these sources, the American or the Jewish, should elicit greater piety? Are the two exclusive? Must a choice be made?" ["I Took Myself as I Was . . . ," Anti Defamation League Bulletin, December, 1976].
"Since Jewry’s attitudes toward its own frailty were complex and contradictory, the schlemiel was sometimes berated for his foolish weakness, and elsewhere exalted for his hard inner strength. For the reformers who sought ways of strengthening and improving Jewish life and laws, the schlemiel embodied those negative qualities of weakness that had to be ridiculed to be overcome. Conversely, to the degree that Jews looked upon their disabilities as external afflictions, sustained through no fault of their own, they used the schlemeil as the model of endurance, his innocence a shield against corruption, his absolute defenselessness the only guaranteed defense against the brulatizing potential of might. The most interesting schlemeils of folklore and literature are those in whom both attitudes find simultaneous expression, reflecting a genuine, sustained ambivalence on the part of author and raconteur." [Ruth Wisse, The Schlemeil as Modern Hero [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971, p. 5.]
"The criers and the kibitzers. The criers earnest, complaining with a peculiar vigor about their businesses, their gas mileage, their health; their despair articulate, dependably lamenting their lives, vaguely mourning conditions, their sorrow something they could expect no one to understand. The kibitzers, deaf to grief, winking confidentially at the others, their voices high-pitched, or lowered in conspiracy to tell of triumphs, of men they knew downtown, of tickets fixed, of languishing goods moved suddenly and unexpectedly, of the windfall that was life, their fingers sticky, smeared with the sugar from their rolls." [Stanley Elkin, "Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers."]
Texts
Stanley Elkin, Searches and Seizures (Godine) and The Living End (Avon)
Bruce Jay Friedman, Stern (Atlantic Monthly)
Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel (Penguin)
Roth, Goodbye, Columbus (Vintage)
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (Bantam)
Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts & Day of the Locust (Norton)
Tentative Course Syllabus
9/1: Woody Allen, director, Broadway Danny Rose (1982) [Larryvision].
After watching Sandy Bates’s film in Stardust Memories, a member of the audience objects, "Why do all comedians turn out to be sentimental bores?"
9/3: Jewish Immigration to the New World: "‘Between Two Endless Days’: The Continuous Journey to the Promised Land," in Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror (ODY reserve)
"In a sense, Jews are the classic American success story--from rags to riches against all opposition. Moreover, like other groups which have found in the United States opportunities denied them in their homelands, Jews have been proud and patriotic Americans. Yet the history of Jews is longer and larger than the history of the United States. At other times and other places, Jews have risen to heights of prosperity and influence, only to have it all destroyed in unpredictable outbursts of anti-Semitic fury. Jews could not readily become complacent members of the establishment, however much they might possess all its visible signs." (Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History [New York: Basic Books, 1981], pp. 98-9.)
9/8: Anzia Yezierska, "The Miracle," "America and I," "Soap and Water" (ODY).
"If you would only know how much you could teach us Americans," a teacher tells the protagonist of "The Miracle." "You are the promise of the centuries to come. You are the heart, the creative pulse of the America to be."
Alan Crosland, director: The Jazz Singer (1927)[Larryvision].
9/10: Early Jewish comedians: George Jessel, George Burns, Sophie Tucker. The Marx Brothers, Horse Feathers (1932) [Larryvision]
Professor Wagstaff informs his biology class, "Now the blood carriers are the hill-dwelling tribes which live in the Alps. They feed on rice and old shoes. Then behind the Alps is more Alps and the Lord alps them that help themselves. The bloodrushes from the head to the feet, gets a look at those feet, and then rushes back up to the head again."
9/15: Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933).
"A man is hired to give advice to the readers of a newspaper. The job is a circulation stunt and the whole staff considers it a joke. He welcomes the job, because it might lead to a gossip column . . . He too considers the job a joke, but after several months at it, the joke begins to escape him. He sees that the majority of the letters are profoundly humble pleas for moral and spiritual advice, that they are inarticulate expressions of genuine suffering. He also discovers that his correspondents take him seriously. For the first time in his life, he is forced to examine the values by which he lives. This examination shows him that he is the victim of the joke and not its perpetrator."
9/17: Neil Simon, playwright, Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983) [Larryvision].
"WEAF presents dinner at Brigton Beach starring the Jacob Jerome Family and featuring tonight’s specialty, liver and cabbage, brought to you by Ex-Lax, the mild laxative. . . I’m putting all this down in my memoirs, so if I grow up warped and twisted, the world will know why."
9/22: Woody Allen, director, Radio Days (1986) [Larryvision].
Martin: "Irene and Roger are rich and famous. They have a radio show, wear fancy clothes, they hobnob with celebrity friends, they go to all the openings and night clubs. What, you think they’re happier than us?"
Tess: "How much time do I have to answer that question?"
9/24: Michael Greenwald on
Bugs Bunny as Jewish comedian.
9/29: J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951).
"’But you’re wrong about that hating business. I mean about hating football players and all. You really are. I don’t hate too many guys. What I may do, I may hate them for a little while, like this guy Stradlater I knew at Pencey, and this other boy, Robert Ackley. I hated them once in a while--I admit it--but it doesn’t last too long, is what I mean. After a while, if I didn’t come in the room, or if didn’t see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort of missed them. I mean, I sort of missed them.’"
10/1: J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.
10/6: Barry Levinson, Avalon (1989) [Larryvision].
"I came to America in 1914," Sam Krichinsky tells his grandchildren. "It was the most beautiful place you ever saw, a celebration of lights. I thought they [the Fourth of July fireworks] were for me. Sam was an American."
10/8: Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, Your Show of Shows (1953-56).
Richard Benjamin, director: My Favorite Year (1982) [Larryvision].
"Dim sum is too hard to eat with chopsticks--don’t make yourself crazy," Benjy Stone explains. "Katherine, Jews know two things: suffering, and where to find great Chinese food."
10/13: Billy Crystal, Mr. Saturday Night (1992) [Larryvision].
Crystal’s comedian alter-ego, Buddy Young, Jr., telling his brother, Stan, his lifelong manager, about doing stand-up comedy: ". . . when it’s good, when you’re cooking, you can take them anywhere you want. You’re powerful, you prowl the stage like a panther, it feels so good it goes right into your blood. You can be a schmuck in the afternoon, but you’re the king of the night. Every woman wants to fuck you, every man wants to know you. You never knew that, Stan, and I felt bad for you, and I wanted you to at least be close to it. I didn’t take your life, Stan--I gave you one."
10/15: Take-home Midterm due by 4:00 p.m. in PJB’s Richardson Hall mailbox.
10/20: Bernard Malamud, "The First Seven Years," "The Mourners," "Angel Levine," "The Prison," in The Magic Barrel (1958).
"Throughout his trials Manischevitz had remained somewhat stoic, almost unbelieving that all this had descended upon his head, as if all this were happening, let us say, to an acquaintance or some distant relative; it was in sheer quantity of woe incomprehensible. It was also ridiculous, unjust, and because he had always been a religious man, it was in a way an affront to God. Manischevitz believed this in all his suffering. When his burden had grown too crushingly heavy to be borne, he prayed in his chair with shut hollow eyes, ‘My dear God, sweetheart, did I deserve that this should happen to me?’"
10/22: Malamud, "The Lady of the Lake," "The Bill," "The Last Mohican," "The Loan," "The Magic Barrel" in The Magic Barrel.
10/27: Philip Roth, Goodbye Columbus (1959).
"If we meet you at all, God, it’s because we’re carnal, and acquisitive, and thereby partake of you. I am carnal, and I know You approve. I just know it. But how carnal can I get? I am acquisitive. Where do I turn now in my acquisitiveness? Where do we meet? Which prize is You?"
10/29: Roth, "The Conversion of the Jews," "Defender of the Faith."
11/3: Bruce Jay Friedman, Stern (1962).
"On clear weekend days during that summer, Stern was able to look straight down the street as far as a mile and make out the man playing softball in the road with neighboring boys. On such days, Stern would go back inside his house, his day ruined. And often, inside the house, he would think about his Jewishness."
11/5: Friedman, Stern.
11/10: Mel Brooks, director, The Producers (1968) [Larryvision].
Max Bialystock’s self-portrait: "Bloom, look at me--I’m drowning. Other men sail through life; Bialystock has struck a reef. Bloom, I’m being sunk by a society that demands success, when all I can offer is failure."
11/12: Barry Levinson, director, Tin Men (1982) [Larryvision].
Tilly’s salad bar prayer: "God, if you’re responsible for all this stuff down here, maybe you’ve got a moment’s attention for me. Between the IRS, the Home Improvement Commission and Mr. Merengue, I’m just up to here with all this bullshit. To be frank with you, I’m in the toilet. Just do what you can, all right? I’d appreciate it. Amen."
11/17: Stanley Elkin, The Living End (1977).
"But what salvages the best of American Jewish humor is often the continuation of Heine’s achievement in shaping language itself for comic purposes. The Jews are not the only people to claim to have talked to God, but are, I think, the only people to have talked back to God, to have attempted to bargain and negotiate . . . . At its most authentic Jewish humor demonstrates a sensitivity to language as the vehicle of truth, has helped verbalize anxieties, has contributed its desperanto to the articulation of the modern mood" [Whitman, "Laughter in the Dark: Notes on American-Jewish Humor," pp. 205-6].
"‘Browbeater,’" he prayed, ‘Bouncer Being, Boss of Bullies--this is Ellerbee, sixty-two year fetus in Eternity, tot, toddler, babe in Hell. Can you hear me? I know You exist because I saw You, avuncular in Your green pastures like an old man on a picnic. The angeled minarets I saw, the gold streets and marble temples and all the flashy summer palace architecture, all the gorgeous glory locked in Receivership, Your zoned heaven in Holy Escrow. . . All of it--Your manna, your ambrosia, your Heavenly Host in the summer whites. So can You hear me, pick out my voice from all the others in this din bin? Come on, come on, old Terrorist, God the Father, God the Godfather. The conventional wisdom is we can talk to You, that You love us, that--’
‘I can hear you.’"
11/19: Elkin, "The Condominium" in Searches and Seizures.
"‘I’ve lived provisionally here,’" Marshall Preminger says of his life amidst inhabitants of a Florida condominium community. "’Like someone under military government, martial law, an occupied life. This isn’t going as I meant it to. I’m a stranger--that something of what I’m driving at. My life is a little like being in a foreign country. There’s displaced person in me. I feel--listen--I feel . . . Jewish. I mean evern here, among Jews, where everybody’s Jewish, I feel Jewish.’"
11/22-30: THANKSGIVING BREAK
12/1: Woody Allen, director: Annie Hall (1976) [Larryvision].
"In fact, what is most Jewish about Annie Hall, Manhattan and Stardust Memories is what is most American about them. The Jews, having found a home in the heart of the American middle class, have inherited its conflicts: ambition vs. ethical probity, commerce vs. spirit, family vs. career, and it makes some sense to see Allen’s recent films as footnotes to the history of immigrant success and therefore as reflections of the life that began on the Lower East Side and eventually ended uptown by way of Brooklyn. It might well be said that Allen’s ambiguous celebrations of uptown Manhattan are predicated upon a childhood spent in Brooklyn, from which the Brooklyn Bridge looked like a stairway to paradise." [Mark Schechner, "Woody Allen and the Failure of the Therapeutic," in Sarah Blacher Cohen, ed., From Hester Street to Hollywood (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1983), p. 239.]
12/3: Woody Allen, director: Stardust Memories (1981) [Larryvision].
"The hostility of the standup comic toward his night-club audience is often considered self-evident, but the hostility of a movie director toward the public that idolizes him doesn’t have the same logic behind it, and it’s almost unheard of. Woody Allen has somehow combined the two, and his hostility takes a special form. He’s trying to stake out his claim to be an artist like Fellini or Bergman--to be accepted in the serious, gentile artists’ club. And he sees his public as Jews trying to pull him back down into the Jewish clowns’ club." Pauline Kael, "The Prince Who Turned into a Frog" (review of Stardust Memories), rpt in For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1994), p. 863.
12/8: Joan Micklin Silver, director, Crossing Delancey (1988) [Larryvision].
Izzy: "I know lots of famous writers and publishers and and editors. I organize the most prestigious writers series in New York. Me. I do it. And I have plenty of friends, lots of women who are doing tremendous things with their lives, and don’t need a man to feel complete."
Izzy’s grandmother, Bubby: "A professor once said--a college professor--‘No matter how much money you got, if you’re alone, you’re sick.’"
12/10: Woody Allen, director: Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) [Larryvision].
"But that’s fiction, that’s movies . . . I mean . . . I mean, you see too many movies. I’m talking about reality. If you want a happy ending, you should see a Hollywood movie."
12/17: Final paper due at noon in PJB’s English Department mailbox.