Vicomte De Brag Inside, Outside

By R.Z. Sheppard

When James Joyce wanted to symbolize exile, he did it with a Jew, Leopold Bloom of Ulysses. American Jewish writers did not hesitate to import this conceit, making the Jew-as-outsider one of the durable cliches in the national literature. But the facts of life were quite different from the fiction of alienation. By the end of World War II, the sons and daughters of ghetto immigrants were well on their way to becoming deeply rooted members of the middle class. Their semiofficial arrival can be dated to 1955. That was the year Herman Wouk published Marjorie Morningstar, the best seller about a prodigal daughter who ends up a proper suburban matron.

Israel David Goodkind, the late-middle-aged narrator of Wouk's latest novel, is smarter than Marjorie. He is exceptionally adept at having it both ways: ordering consomme but enjoying chicken soup. On the "inside" he is deeply religious, privy to the spiritual riches of an ancient tradition. On the "outside" he is a famous tax lawyer with a reputation for creative thinking, which lands him in a consultant's chair during the last days of the Nixon Administration. His jobs: contributing "ethical touches" to the President's Watergate speeches and acting as a messenger between his old friend Golda Meir and Nixon.

As a Talmudic scholar in charge of Nixonian ethics, Goodkind has little to do except write his memoirs. This device allows Wouk to play his own inside- outside game: the surreptitious satisfaction of the autobiographical urge through a fictional character. Presidents and Prime Ministers aside, the novel is patterned on the life and times of Herman Wouk, 69, the author of The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Wouk and Goodkind were born in the same year in The Bronx. Both are sons of laundry owners. Both share Russian-Jewish ancestry and religious orthodoxy. Both author and character wrote plays and humor at Columbia University and had early careers recycling old gags for radio.

Like Wouk, Goodkind is reader friendly, operating under the frequently patronizing assumption that his audience has had a hard day. For example: "The problem with elites, which in our topsy-turvy times has got people all churned up is this: who defines the elite? And then, who decides that you or I do or don't meet those superior requirements? Such queries can drift us into minefields like racism and genocide, which this easygoing amusement will bypass, thank you."

An amiable morality tale is more like it. In 90 short chapters, Goodkind rambles over the American-Jewish experience, from immigration to assimilation and finally to a resurgence of identity through the nation of Israel. There are anecdotes from the old country and stories about the rise from respectable poverty to even more respectable affluence. Goodkind relives his bar mitzvah and metamorphosis from yeshiva boy to "Vicomte de Brag," his pen name on the Columbia student paper. The tone and texture of these recollections are wearily familiar, a point that even the author seems to concede: "The reader has been at big wedding receptions, and if you picture as fancy a one as you ever saw, you've got it."

It took Marjorie Morningstar some 400 pages to lose her virginity. Davey Goodkind needs 500 and a chapter titled "Consummation." There is a touch of self-mockery in this, though Goodkind's long-windedness leaves little doubt of his underlying self-importance. He appears modest about his role in Government but leaves the impression that he was decisive in securing U.S. aid for Israel during the October War. His on-again-off-again affair with a Gentile show girl is elevated to a grand romantic passion when all the evidence suggests that our hero was merely having a good time before he settled down with a more appropriate mate. The woman he marries is kept in figurative purdah ("She is my private love, not for publication"), though he pulls back the screen when it suits him.

Wouk knows all the storytelling tricks and uses them freely. His minichapters seem calculated for attention spans shrunk by 40 years of television; he has increased his quotient of scatological humor; he injects sermonettes on foreign policy and domestic relations; and he provides walk-on parts for celebrities. Should there be any confusion, Marlene Dietrich is the "woman with beautiful crossed legs," and Ernest Hemingway is the burly guy with the mustache who says, "Hammering out a style takes work." He might have added that if you hammer too long, you get pulp.