Word: ordeal
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...ORDEAL OF CIVILITY...
...Freud, the result was the theory of repression. Just as the assimilating Jew repressed the crude Yiddish-keit of his inner being, says Cuddihy, so did the Gentile repress the id that was at the root of everybody's being. As Ordeal would have it: "The importunate 'Yid' released from ghetto and shtetl is the model, I contend, for Freud's coarse, importunate Td.'" Marx, like Freud, is depicted as an iconoclastic unmasker of the hypocritical civility of the Gentiles...
Excessive Zeal. Cuddihy, 53, was raised as a Catholic and teaches sociology at Hunter College in New York City. To offer such theories in an age that regards ethnic determinism with the deepest suspicion clearly takes nerve. Ordeal, however,.is not antiSemitic. At its best it is a provocative revisionist ramble through the received ideas of the past hundred years, which encourages readers to alter their conceptions of the world. Cuddihy's presentation is flawed by excessive zeal. If a Jew utters a word like coarse, he automatically triggers, in Cuddihy's mind, visions of the primal scream...
...says, Marx and Freud expressed only indirectly. But when Cuddihy poaches upon the field of literary criticism, his judgments cloud his vision. He arrogantly dismisses Novelist Bernard Malamud as "a teller of Christian tales who 'passes' as a Jew." evidently because Malamud does not depict the Jewish ordeal the way Cuddihy defines it. Similarly, he laments the vogue for Yiddish Storyteller Isaac Bashevis Singer on the dubious grounds that he portrays not the real Jew, whatever that is, but a "sentimental myth" instead...
...French popular music. Whatever the glories of France, popular music was never among them. Whether ballad or brassy show-stopper or (deliver us) rock 'n' roll, every French pop song sounds as if it is being pulled out of an accordion. Those who cannot imagine what the ordeal might be like but are still curious should check out Jacques Brel. Others might well beware...