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Wall Street Journal

Joseph Epstein Dismisses Four ‘Eminent Jews'

I realize that anyone who gets a bad notice believes that he has been cheated, but surely Joseph Epstein's review of my book 'Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer' depends for its many sarcasms on the most flagrant of misreadings (Books, April 12). Mr. Epstein denigrates all four subjects, ignoring, for instance, Norman Mailer's 'Armies of the Night' and 'The Executioner's Song,' both of which received Pulitzer Prizes and are now regarded as American masterworks of nonfiction writing. He doesn't mention Mel Brooks's '2000 Year Old Man' or 'Young Frankenstein' but uses an off-color joke in 'Blazing Saddles' to dismiss Brooks's relentless low-comedy assault on death. Mr. Epstein accuses feminist leader Betty Friedan of 'intractable leftism' when in fact she was a lifetime bourgeoisie whose insistence on sex with men, marriage and motherhood turned off younger feminist women in the late 1960s and after. He ignores 'West Side Story' and 'Chichester Psalms' but recalls at length his discomfort years ago with Leonard Bernstein's physically expressive conducting style, without mentioning that I analyzed in depth what Bernstein was doing and that orchestras and audiences loved his manner on the podium. At his death, Bernstein was universally regarded as one of the great conductors of the 20th century.