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Unclean Lips: Obscenity and Jews in American Literature

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Unclean Lips: Obscenity and Jews in American Literature Unclean Lips: Obscenity and Jews in American Literature by Joshua N. Lambert A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature) in The University of Michigan 2009 Doctoral Committee: Professor Jonathan E. Freedman, Co-Chair Professor Anita Norich, Co-Chair Professor June M. Howard Professor Deborah Dash Moore Associate Professor Julian A. Levinson Copyright © Joshua N. Lambert 2009 Acknowledgments This project benefited from generous fellowships from the Rackham Graduate School and the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, as well as the Center for Jewish History in New York City, the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. My research trips to archives in Washington, D.C., New York, and Toronto were made possible by a grant from the Van Akin and Julia Burd Fund for Research in English at the University of Michigan. Many scholars have mentored or advised me over the years, and I am grateful to them. In addition to introducing me to the study of modern Jewish literature during my undergraduate years at Harvard, Ruth Wisse suggested that I consider the University of Michigan as an institution unusually well-equipped to support the study of Jewish literature within an English department. I also profited, in the years between college and graduate school, from the guidance of Steven Zipperstein and Maxine Rodburg. When I arrived in Ann Arbor, I discovered a remarkable group of advisors whose approaches to pedagogy and scholarship have inspired me. This dissertation reflects each of their influences. In one of our first meetings, Anita Norich recommended Adele Wiseman's Crackpot and exhorted me to learn Yiddish, and thus started me down the road toward this project. She has been generous ever since with her readings of my work and with her high expectations of me. While researching and writing this dissertation, I ii have often reread Jonathan Freedman's The Temple of Culture, finding in it a vigorous model of the sort of criticism I hope to produce. It has been truly a pleasure to tag along on some of Freedman's rambles through American literature and culture, and to receive his insightful responses to my work-in-progress. Deborah Dash Moore arrived in Ann Arbor during my second year of studies like manna from heaven; her support has been instrumental at every stage of the dissertation, from her insightful redirection of my prospectus to her careful edits on my conclusion. June Howard introduced me to key methodologies—to the extent that I practice literary history, I do so thanks to her—and she has always made time to chat about comics and graphic novels, and everything else. Julian Levinson's warmth and enthusiasm have buoyed me up throughout my graduate education, and I will hope to emulate his frank and self-reflexive approach to mentorship with my own students in the future. I cannot imagine having completed this project without this extraordinary committee of advisors. I would also like to thank for their suggestions and encouragement Murray Baumgarten, Mark Cohen, Hasia Diner, Mikhail Krutikov, Eileen Pollack, Raymond Scheindlin, Esther Schor, Michaël Taugis, Alan Wald, and Hana Wirth-Nesher; for instruction and guidance in Yiddish language and literature, Beatrice (Brukhe) Lang Caplan, Vera Szabo, David Braun, and Esther Frank; for offering me opportunities to speak on topics related to the dissertation, the Michigan Comix Collective, the Philip Roth Society, the Jewish Cultural Studies Discussion Group of the Modern Language Association, and Rabbi Daniel Bronstein of Congregation Beth Elohim of Park Slope, iii Brooklyn. Sections of the dissertation appeared, or are forthcoming, in two edited collections, and I appreciate the responses of their editors and anonymous readers. Sections of Chapter 5 appear in The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, edited by Ranen Omer-Sherman and Samantha Baskind, and sections of Chapter 2 will appear in Choosing Yiddish: Studies in Yiddish Literature, Culture, and History, edited by Lara Rabinovitch, Hannah Pressman, and Shiri Goren. Throughout the project, I relied on the library collections of the University of Michigan, Harvard University, the Center for Jewish History, Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto, York University, the New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress. I owe particular thanks to the responsive and diligent librarians who operate the 7-Fast system at the University of Michigan library. Lawyers who patiently answered my questions and enriched my understanding of the law of obscenity include Daniel Bress, Victor Kovner, Joel Wardinger, Tomer Degani, and Jordana Lambert. Graduate students in English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan have been crucial allies throughout my work on this project, as have my academic support group in Cambridge: Lia Brozgal, Greg Cohen, Andy Romig, and Loren Wolfe. David Koffman and Kevan Choset have gone above and beyond collegiality in their willingness to advise and assist with this project. Caroline Miller, Alex Ralph, Lizzie Hutton, Alex Beringer, and Angie and Scott Berkeley all offered me hospitality during visits back to Ann Arbor, and Julie Straus generously lent her apartment in D.C. I'd also like to thank my editors at various publications, especially Sara iv Ivry at Nextbook.org and Ken Gordon at JBooks.com, as well as all of the warm and thoughtful people at the Jewish Publication Society who made it possible for me to publish American Jewish Fiction: A JPS Guide in January of this year without sacrificing any of my forward momentum in my graduate work. Finally, my family, Lamberts and Kippurs both, encouraged me not only while I wrote this dissertation, but also through all the work that prepared me for it, beginning with my Jewish day school education in Toronto and up to the final revisions. I deeply appreciate their love and support. As for my incomparable wife, Sara Kippur, no words— certainly no printable ones—would suffice to express my debts to her. v Table of Contents Acknowledgments ii List of Figures vii Abstract viii CHAPTER 1. Introduction: The Story of the Shmutz 1 CHAPTER 2. Unorthodox Jews: Decentralized Authority and the Stakes of Obscenity 15 CHAPTER 3. Unclean Lips: Taboo Words, Call It Sleep, and the Beginning of the 1960s 112 CHAPTER 4. Other Fucker or Motherfucker: Philip Roth, Adele Wiseman, and Obscene 173 Allegory CHAPTER 5. Graphic Novels and Dirty Pictures: Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, and the Littérisation 240 of Comic Books through Obscenity CHAPTER 6. Conclusion: Obscenity Now 299 WORKS CITED 307 vi List of Figures Figure 2.1. In fighting Justice Abe Fortas's nomination to the position of Chief 21 Justice of the Supreme Court, his political opponents linked him, without any particular justification, to "pornography" and "filth." Figure 2.2. Lenny Bruce using the Forverts as a prop on "The Steve Allen 98 Show." Figure 5.1. Detail from R. Crumb, “Honeybunch Kaminski The Drug-Crazed 258 Runaway,” Uneeda Comix (1970). Figure 5.2. Detail from Art Spiegelman, “Jolly Jack Jack-Off,” Gothic Blimp 259 Works #7 (1969). Figure 5.3. Detail from Will Eisner, A Contract with God (161). 261 Figure 5.4. Detail from Jules Feiffer, Tantrum (7). 262 Figure 5.5. Detail from Tantrum (165). 264 Figure 5.6. Detail from Contract (111). 268 Figure 5.7. Detail from Contract (164). 269 vii Abstract Unclean Lips: Obscenity and Jews in American Literature by Joshua N. Lambert Co-chairs: Jonathan E. Freedman and Anita Norich This dissertation examines Jews' literary, social, and legal interventions in controversies about obscenity in the United States in the 20th century. Scholars acknowledge obscenity debates as crucial in the development of modern American literature, but the roles Jews played in this history as publishers, lawyers, judges, and authors have not yet been interrogated. Insisting that no single explanation adequately accounts for the range of American Jews' influential interventions, the dissertation proposes four ways in which obscenity mattered to American Jews, as Jews, given their specific historical circumstances. The production and defense of obscenity contributed to Jews' attempts to counter sexual anti-Semitism; to obtain cultural capital that was otherwise denied to them; to defend contraception; and to advocate for minority rights. The decentralization of authority in Diasporic societies and resulting diversity also helps to explain the vigor with which some American Jews intervened in these debates. viii The body of the dissertation presents a series of literary case studies. Analysis of the legal, literary, and linguistic contexts of Henry Roth's Call It Sleep (1935) clarifies that Roth's emphasis on dirtiness and use of "dirty words" represent an attempt to atone for his personal sexual deviance—which he, like other modern writers, understood as a Jewish trait—through the techniques of Anglo-American modernism. Close readings of Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969) and Adele Wiseman's Crackpot (1974) propose that these novels radicalize a set of sexual allegories common throughout Biblical, rabbinic, and ethnic American literature. Attention to visual and to legal sources reveal how in the late 1970s, Will Eisner and Jules Feiffer deployed explicit visual representations of sexual frustration to realign comic books in the field of cultural production and establish the "graphic novel" as a genre of literature suitable for adult readers. Through these case studies, the project proposes that obscenity and the debates surrounding it have been a crucial element in the development of contemporary Jewish culture in the U.S, and, no less strikingly, that the interventions of Jews have been vital in the development of American attitudes about, policies on, and treatments of obscenity. ix CHAPTER 1.
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