Books
March, 1969
The first generation of Jewish entertainers in America went on the stage; the second went into literature. In Portnoy's Complaint (Random House), Philip Roth has belted out a book with the exuberance and gusto of Eddie Cantor singing Whoopee. His Jewish-mother characterization, however, is not quite the gentle sentimentalization that, say, Al Jolson used to conjure up on bended knee. Roth indicts the Jewish mother as an all-American castrater, slashing a trail of impotent husbands and sons. In t...
