Neurotica

By Caroline Tiger

An inquiry at my bookstore as to the whereabouts of Neurotica resulted in a clerk's loud reply, "OH, THAT'S IN EROTIC LIT." His voice carried amazingly far through the quiet stacks and almost seemed to echo: "Erotic lit, erotic lit, erotic-ic-ic-lit-lit-lit-lit."

Yes, that old scene--the one that flashes through your mind as you wait in line to buy condoms or tampons or hair depilatory. Aah, the sacrifices we make for safe sex, a smooth upper lip, and in this case, a desire to read Neurotica, an anthology of "Jewish Writers on Sex," edited by Melvin Jules Bukiet (W.W. Norton).

Despite all of the titillation promised by the book's title and subtitle, by its jacket photo of two gourds kissing--and by its dwelling in the seedy underbelly of book retail--it turns out Neurotica would be better shelved in Jewish Literature or Anthologies.

In fact, most of Neurotica's 27 short stories and excerpts from longer books and plays more resemble Merchant & Ivory than 9 1/2 Weeks. If it's heaving bosoms and pulsating shafts you're seeking, Neurotica will not get you off. If it's psychological gymnastics you're after (or what one character in Neurotica coins "mental orgasms"), then by all means buy this book and have your way with it.

The first story--Woody Allen's "The Whore of Mensa"--is a perfect example of this collection's focus on the cerebral over the physical. Rather than sex, Allen's unlikely whores peddle pseudo-intellectual babble and collegiate conversation. In Rebecca Goldstein's "The Courtship," the relationship at the story's center goes unconsummated until the final two paragraphs. In "Innocence," Harold Brodkey flexes and pumps his writerly muscles for twenty pages, describing an oral sex act‹yes, just one‹and the ensuing orgasm. The bulk of these twenty pages document the running dialogue going through the head of the worker bee.

Rather than simplifying it to mere physicality, Neurotica's authors use sex as a springboard for exploring interfaith relationships, the Holocaust, Jewish mothers, cultural stereotypes, and psychotherapy (not necessarily in that order).

One cultural stereotype in particular keeps popping up: It is the myth of the hypersexual Jewess in contrast to the icy, untouchable shiksa. But this myth has an evil twin, familiar to most from Seinfeld¹s "shiksappeal" episode, that insists Christian women have something more to offer in bed (or on the floor, the kitchen table, in the shower, etc.).

Separate stories in the collection subscribe to separate myths. In Cynthia Ozick¹s "The Pagan Rabbi," a Jewish man complains about his former Christian wife¹s lack of libido. But in "Romancing the Yohrzeit Light," by Thane Rosenbaum, a survivor's son who has forsaken his religion finds a very willing partner in a tall, cool Swede. In this last story, the son¹s relationship with his mother and her religion seems a large factor in his choice of partner.

Interfaith relations are not so ambivalently portrayed--they're largely taboo and subsequently guilt-inducing. In Nathan Englander¹s "Peep Show," which also appeared in 1999's New Yorker summer fiction issue, a Jewish man is mesmerized by a woman with dark brown skin at a 42nd St. peep show. This man is married to a non-Jew, much to his mother's chagrin. Is his guilt over the peep show a representation of the shame he feels for his interfaith marriage and decision to change his name from Feinstein to the less ethnic "Fein"?

There's much Jewish-versus-Catholic subtext and symbolism in Bernard Malamud's "Still Life," a comic tale of Fidelman, an American artist in Rome, obsessed with a painfully Catholic, moody pittrice. Pitifully desperate for attention from the sullen Annamaria, Fidelman nearly converts to Catholicism to win her fleeting affections. The drama concludes with a truly memorable line, "Pumping slowly, he nailed her to the cross."

Of note is "Taibele and Her Demon" a simple, moving folk tale by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Also "P.S." by Helen Schulman, in which a thirtysomething woman rewrites her high school love affair by shtupping a teenage boy with the same name and many of the same characteristics as her years-ago infatuation. There is also included an excerpt from Erica Jong's famous Fear of Flying.

As with all anthologies, Neurotica entertains mostly in the questions it raises: Why anthologize around a specific religion or culture? Any obvious omissions? And most bizarrely, will society ever determine which religion¹s womenfolk are better in bed? Perhaps this calls for an Internet survey.

For those wishing to further ponder these questions, an Amazon.com search yields two more Jewish/Sex anthologies: The Oy of Sex: Jewish Women Write Erotica (Cleis Press, edited by Mary Sheiner) and Friday, the Rabbi Wore Lace: Jewish Lesbian Erotica (also Cleis Press, edited by Karen X. Tulchinsky).

I highly recommend that blushing violets purchase these collections on-line.