’ m a petty, raging, vengeful, unforgiving Jew, and I have been insulted one time too many by another petty, raging, vengeful, unforgiving Jew, and if you intend to stay, then type what I ’ ve written, because it cost me bloody hell in my aching joints to write it. ”
“ Okay. If you ’ re such a Jew, and these Jews are all so central to your thinking—and that they have this hold is unfathomable to me, really—but if you really are stuck on Jews like this, and if Israel does mean something to you, then sure I ’ ll type—but only if you dictate an essay about Israel for The New York Times. ”
“ You don ’ t understand. That request from him, after what he ’ s published in inquiry, is the final insult. In Inquiry, run by the kind of people he used to attack before he began attacking people like me! ”
“ Only it is not an insult. He ’ s asked you what he ’ s asked because people know who you are, because you can be so easily identified with American Jews. What I can ’ t understand is what you ’ re in such a state about. Either do it or don ’ t do it, but don ’ t t ake it as an insult when it wasn ’ t meant as one. ”
“ What was it meant as? He wants me to write an article that says I ’ m not an anti-Semite anymore and that I love Israel with all my heart—and that he can stick up his ass. ”
“ I can ’ t believe that ’ s what he wants you to write. ”
“ Diana, when somebody wh o has said about me and my work and the Jews what this guy has, then turns around and says why don ’ t you write something nice about us for a change—well. how can you fail to understand that this is particularly galling to me? “ Write something in behalf of Israel. ’ But what about the hostility to Jews that ’ s at the heart of every word I publish? To propagate that caricature in Inquiry, publicly to damn me as the caricaturist, and then in private to suggest this piece—and with some expectation at least of the crypto anti-Semite ’ s acquiescence! ‘ He has prestige with segments of the public that don ’ t care for the rest of us. ’ Right—the scum, the scum whom his novels are fashioned to please. If Zuckerman, a Jew adored by the scum for finding Jews no less embarrassing and distasteful than they do, were to make the argument for the Jews to the scum, ‘ it would be of some interest. ’ You bet! Like a case of schizophrenia is of interest! On the other hand, when Appel speaks up in a Jewish crisis, ‘ it ’ s expected. ’ Sign of deep human engagement and predictably superior compassion. Sign of nothing less than the good, the best, the most responsible Jewish son of them all. These Jews, these Jews and their responsible sons! First he says I vilify Jews under the guise of fiction, now he wants me to lobby for them in The New York Times ’ . The comedy is that the real visceral haters of the bourgeois Jews, with the real contempt for their everyday lives, are these complex intellectual giants. They loathe them, and don ’ t particularly care for the smell of the Jewish proletariat either. All of them full of sympathy suddenly for the ghetto world of their traditional fathers now that the traditional fathers are Filed for safekeeping in Beth Moses Memorial Park. When they were alive they wanted to strangle the immigrant bastards to death because they dared to think they could actually be of consequence without ever having read Proust past Swann ’ s Way. And the ghetto—what the ghetto saw of these guys was their heels: out, out, screaming for air, to write about great Jews like Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Dean Howells. But now that the Weathermen are around, and me and my friends Jerry Rubin and Herbert Marcuse and H. Rap Brown, it ’ s where oh where ’ s the inspired orderliness of those good old Hebrew school days? Where ’ s the linoleum? Where ’ s Aunt Rose? Where is all the wonderful inflexible patriarchal authority into which they wanted to stick a
“ Okay. If you ’ re such a Jew, and these Jews are all so central to your thinking—and that they have this hold is unfathomable to me, really—but if you really are stuck on Jews like this, and if Israel does mean something to you, then sure I ’ ll type—but only if you dictate an essay about Israel for The New York Times. ”
“ You don ’ t understand. That request from him, after what he ’ s published in inquiry, is the final insult. In Inquiry, run by the kind of people he used to attack before he began attacking people like me! ”
“ Only it is not an insult. He ’ s asked you what he ’ s asked because people know who you are, because you can be so easily identified with American Jews. What I can ’ t understand is what you ’ re in such a state about. Either do it or don ’ t do it, but don ’ t t ake it as an insult when it wasn ’ t meant as one. ”
“ What was it meant as? He wants me to write an article that says I ’ m not an anti-Semite anymore and that I love Israel with all my heart—and that he can stick up his ass. ”
“ I can ’ t believe that ’ s what he wants you to write. ”
“ Diana, when somebody wh o has said about me and my work and the Jews what this guy has, then turns around and says why don ’ t you write something nice about us for a change—well. how can you fail to understand that this is particularly galling to me? “ Write something in behalf of Israel. ’ But what about the hostility to Jews that ’ s at the heart of every word I publish? To propagate that caricature in Inquiry, publicly to damn me as the caricaturist, and then in private to suggest this piece—and with some expectation at least of the crypto anti-Semite ’ s acquiescence! ‘ He has prestige with segments of the public that don ’ t care for the rest of us. ’ Right—the scum, the scum whom his novels are fashioned to please. If Zuckerman, a Jew adored by the scum for finding Jews no less embarrassing and distasteful than they do, were to make the argument for the Jews to the scum, ‘ it would be of some interest. ’ You bet! Like a case of schizophrenia is of interest! On the other hand, when Appel speaks up in a Jewish crisis, ‘ it ’ s expected. ’ Sign of deep human engagement and predictably superior compassion. Sign of nothing less than the good, the best, the most responsible Jewish son of them all. These Jews, these Jews and their responsible sons! First he says I vilify Jews under the guise of fiction, now he wants me to lobby for them in The New York Times ’ . The comedy is that the real visceral haters of the bourgeois Jews, with the real contempt for their everyday lives, are these complex intellectual giants. They loathe them, and don ’ t particularly care for the smell of the Jewish proletariat either. All of them full of sympathy suddenly for the ghetto world of their traditional fathers now that the traditional fathers are Filed for safekeeping in Beth Moses Memorial Park. When they were alive they wanted to strangle the immigrant bastards to death because they dared to think they could actually be of consequence without ever having read Proust past Swann ’ s Way. And the ghetto—what the ghetto saw of these guys was their heels: out, out, screaming for air, to write about great Jews like Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Dean Howells. But now that the Weathermen are around, and me and my friends Jerry Rubin and Herbert Marcuse and H. Rap Brown, it ’ s where oh where ’ s the inspired orderliness of those good old Hebrew school days? Where ’ s the linoleum? Where ’ s Aunt Rose? Where is all the wonderful inflexible patriarchal authority into which they wanted to stick a
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