VARIETY
FOR GOD AND THE SUBURBS
The campaign managers of the
New Orthodoxy have run through
history, economics, sociology, po–
litical theory, psychology, theology
and mysticism, but the only one
to come up with a really new idea
is Herman Wouk. He bases his
case for God and the suburbs on
the perfervid struggles of Marjor–
ie Morgenstern, a pretty Jewish
girl
with a talent for dramatics,
to preserve her virginity and bag
a husband.
So it seems to me on reading
Marjorie Morningstar.
1
(This is
her stage name.) The only con–
tinuous action or principle of sus–
pense in this 565-page work is will
she-won't she? This goes on for
417 pages to become the longest
tease in the modern novel until
Marjorie is spoiled of her treasure
during a total eclipse of the moon:
"Her age was twenty-one years,
four months and seven days." The
seducer is Noel Airman
(luft–
mensh;
he was born Saul Ehr–
man), an intellectual song-writer
from the Borsht Belt and Green–
wich Village, some ten years her
senior, who told her at the out–
set that he was not the marrying
kind.
It
takes her a long time-
1 By Herman Wouk. Doubleday.
$4.95.
565
and a long pursuit of him through
Europe-to come to her senses
about Noel. When she does, she
returns to the States to marry a
lawyer-decent man and steady
provider-raise a family in Ma–
maroneck and keep a kosher home.
Somehow, all of this is supposed
to show that psychoanalysis is non–
sense and intellectuals are bums,
and that the accumulated folk wis–
dom of the Bronx and Central
Park West is superior to sex, bo–
hemianism, the new pediatrics,
and the eating of crustaceans and
pork.
This is, as I say, an unusual
argument. The book overflows
with a
Volkstumlichkeit
which, for
some reason, reminds me of
Abie's
Irish Rose,
and it has a number of
pleasant schmaltzy scenes of a Bar
Mitsvah, wedding and other fam–
ily gatherings.
It
has an even great–
er number of
non-sequiturs
which
are not nearly so pleasant, espe–
cially when they come flying at
you from all directions, bent on
demolishing Greenwich Village
and Broadway by the acre. But
there have been deadlier barrages.
Wouk tries to keep it all on a
more or less friendly basis, and you
may enjoy being shot at. For the
book is enjoyable and seldom hard
to read.
It
is much like the mov–
ies in its entertainment value, full
of color and splash, with bits for
the character actors. The observa–
tions on bourgeois Jewish life, its
pretentions and felicities, are ac–
curate and amusing, and the slow-
