As a "deracinated, assimilated, uncertain, wandering young Jew" like Michael Chabon once was, I’d love to know the answer to that question. Chabon’s new books is out, "Manhood for Amateurs," and NPR has an excerpt on its Web site, describing Chabon’s very Rothian encounter with the WASPy parents of his ex-wife.
I didn’t play golf, and he had never smoked marijuana. I was a nail chewer, inclined to brood, and dubious of the motives of other people. He was big and placid, uniformly kind to strangers and friends, and never went anywhere without whistling a little song. I minored in philosophy. He fell asleep watching television. He fell asleep in movie theaters, too, and occasionally, I suspected, while driving. He had been in the navy during World War II, which taught him, he said, to sleep whenever he could. I, still troubled no doubt by perplexing questions of ontology and epistemology raised during my brief flirtation with logical positivism ten years earlier, was an insomniac. I was also a Jew, of a sort; he was, when required, an Episcopalian.
