He has done so by simply but brilliantly casting his American Jewish hero-so obviously long in need of therapy-upon a psychoanalysts’s couch (the current American-Jewish equivalent of the confessional box) and allowed him to rant and rave and rend himself there. Now, with Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth ( Goodbye Columbus, Letting Go, When She Was Good) has finally come up with the existentially quintessential form for any American-Jewish tale bearing-or baring-guilt. For unable to live with his guilt, he is also unable to conceive of living without it.īut while the American-Jewish novelist has thus had a subject, though he has been searching diligently, questing imaginatively, he has lacked an ideal form. Whether it is Salinger’s Seymour or Bellow’s Herzog or Malamud’s Assistant (who, in fact, becomes a Jew just because of his guilt), almost formula-like the American-Jewish hero goes forth to confront the twisted root-causes of his guilt-only to flood his engine with the paralyzing second thoughts of the self-tormenting neurotic, the fringe-level psychotic. So, not surprisingly, a special blend of guilt-power usually fuels the American-Jewish character in fiction, sends him soaring to his manic highs and plummeting to his abject lows. For guilt is as traditionally American as Thanksgiving Day pumpkin pie and, at the same time, on native grounds as far as Jews are concerned: it was the Jews who originated that mother lode of guilt, the theological concept of original sin it was a Jew who developed psychoanalysis, that clinical faith based on a belief in the transferability and negotiability of long-term debts and credits in guilt.
“Guilt-edged insecurity is far more important when it comes to the making-and unmaking-of an American Jew than, say, chicken soup or chopped liver.
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