JEFFERSON CHASE

 

 

Two Sons of "Jewish Wit":  Philip Roth and Rafael Seligmann

THIS ESSAY TREATS ISSUES of humor and Jewish assimilation in Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint and Seligmann’s Rubinsteins Versteigerung. "I’m the son in the Jewish joke," proclaims Roth’s protagonist, "only it ain’t no joke!" The self-comparison with the stereotypical, put-upon son of many a Jewish joke refers to more than just the adolescent’s desire for emancipation from his domineering mother. The "complaint" also encompasses problematic polymorphous sexual urges and longing for integration into Gentile society. Familial and erotic conflicts become cyphers for the social frustrations of the young Jewish-American; his humorous treatment of them, a means of assimilation.

Despite its connection to 1950s and ‘60s America, Portnoy’s exasperated remark applies equally well to the protagonist of Rafael Seligmann’s 1989 novel Rubinsteins Versteigerung. In it, a young Jewish outsider tells of his attempts to establish a tenable adult life in early 1970s West Germany, during which he suffers under a similar constellation of social, familial and erotic pressures. The two novels are ripe for comparison, and indeed Seligmann’s novel has been dubbed a German Portnoy’s Complaint. The affinity, however, goes beyond the thematic. As well as leading parallel lives, Portnoy and Rubinstein share a strikingly similar sense of humor—pointed, unflinching, frivolous, cruel, offensive and playful. This essay thus compares the two novels vis-à-vis the social dynamics of laughter, offering a comparative perspective on Portnoy’s Complaint and a discursive analysis of Rubinsteins Versteigerung, about which relatively little has been written.

Both authors, I contend, work in a tradition of Jewish humor or Judenwitz that originated in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century. Its influence can be seen in their mutual fondness for the insult, the pun, the sarcastic retort, the formulaic joke and above all the humorous diatribe, or kvetch. This discourse is the center of Portnoy’s Complaint and Rubinsteins Versteigerung. In both novels, kvetching tirades interrupt and obscure plot to the extent that the kvetch itself takes over some of structural function of a conventional story line. Moreover, Judenwitz not only informs but relativizes the thematic content, including the controversial statements about Jewishness in both works, which have caused perennial offense among readers. Nonetheless, the divergent reception of their literary efforts by their respective audiences illustrates the differences between the societies that Roth and Seligmann depict and in which their works exist. This essay concludes with reflections on the crucial and controversial topic of assimilation versus minority particularity in American and German society.