Myra-Breckinridge-Gore-Vidal

even love. The plan requires it. Although Dr. Montag and Iwrite each other at least once a week, I feel somewhatguilty for not having told him what I am up to (these noteswill be your introduction, dear Randolph). On the otherhand, we do discuss the one topic we most disagree on,the changing relationship between the sexes. Being Jewishas well as neoFreudian, he is not able to divest himselfentirely of the Law of Moses. For the Jew, the family iseverything; if it had not been, that religion which they socherish (but happily do not practice) would have long sinceended and with it their baleful sense of identity. As a result,the Jew finds literally demoralizing the normal human sexualdrive toward promiscuity. Also, the Old Testamentinjunction not to look upon the father's nakedness is thecore to a puritanism which finds unbearable the thought thatthe male in himself might possess an intrinsicattractiveness, either aesthetically or sensually. In fact, theyhate the male body and ritually tear the penis in order toremind the man so damaged that his sex is unlovely. It is, allin all, a religion even more dreadful than Christianity. Dr.Montag, however, is a thoughtful man, aware of thedamage done him as a child growing up in the householdof a kosher butcher whose wife wanted their son to be arabbi. But even then Randolph was a nonconformist; hechose to be a dentist, that last resort of the rabbimanquBut dentistry soon palled (it was the tongue, notthe teeth that interested him) and so he became apsychologist, and his book, Sexual Role and/orResponsibility, made a complete shambles of Karen