Monday evening roundup

The latest in immigrant writing (reviewed in a very long url). I still haven't read "The Free World", which is first on my list in the genre. Which dovetails nicely into the issue of whether Jews have a monopoly on anxiety (answer: no, but we sure do love to analyze and broadcast it). An excerpt:

First, the purveyors of the Neurotic Jew figure recognize — they feel in their bones — that Jewish anxiety isn’t a genetic affliction or even so much a consequence of histrionic parenting as it is the nontransferable cost of being born Jewish. As a Jew born since, say, A.D. 200, you are forced to live in a world in which you are — for perplexing, unfathomable reasons — not only the object of a widespread psychotic rage but also, as the very consequence of that rage, urged and expected to associate all the more strongly with your heritage. Indeed, you are urged and expected to act as a kind of personal repository for nearly 6,000 years of collective memory and as a bearer of an entire people’s hopes for surviving into the limitless future. You don’t want to be anxious? You don’t want to be neurotic? Tough. You were born into anxiety. Second, celebrating anxiety exhibits pride. Anti-Semites stereotype Jews as hopelessly head-bound and urbanized, lacking in old-fashioned pastoral virility, and a lot of Jews spend a lot of time and energy trying to put the lie to that stereotype. But for centuries being Jewish has also meant a willingness to question, discuss, scrutinize, interpret, dissect and argue over every last niggling aspect of human existence. Exegesis — endless, mind-numbing exegesis — is the soul of the Jewish religion.

Let me state for the record that I--"still" unmarried--fall into none of these categories (nor the previous ones). I took the little quiz at the bottom and scored '3.' So, Tracy McMillan, I won't be buying your book (for myself or any of my numerous unmarried friends, who are also, for the most part, none of those things). Aishwarya Rai Bachchan owns her look. Another perspective: Lizzie owns hers.