Unveiling the Complex Legacies of Bernstein, Brooks, Freidan, and Mailer: A Provocative Review by David Denby
“In different ways, they liberated the Jewish body, releasing the unconscious of the Jewish middle class, ending the restrictions and avoidances that the immigrants and their children, so eager to succeed in America, imposed on themselves. People didn’t go to Betty’s exhortations, Norman’s books, Mel’s movies, and Bernstein’s concerts and West Side Story for displays of rectitude and good taste . . . The elements in these four of wildness, anger, public exaltation, gross burlesque are a good part of what audiences wanted from them.”
