Unveiling the Complex Legacies of Bernstein, Brooks, Freidan, and Mailer: A Provocative Review by David Denby
None of the four (Bernstein possibly excepted) were at all observant, but none of them ever pretended to be other than Jewish, although Friedan’s family dropped the “m” from Friedman because it sounded less Jewish. Also, as Denby makes clear, all four were Ashkenazi Jews, and therefore considerably more unbuttoned and outrageous than German Jews, and not affected by what he calls “that lingering disease, Jewish self-hatred.” Brooks, he noted, was at one point, “the noisiest man in New York (which is saying something)” given the boisterous loquacity of the other three.
