Neurotica: Jewish Writers on Sex - Hardcover

A collection of fiction by some of our most revered writers, reflecting the abundant varieties of one people's sexual experience in all its manifestations--glorious, erotic, neurotic. To the extent that craving is the human condition and commentary the Jewish position, the stories in Neurotica capture a wide range of sexual experience while also probing conflicts and enduring connections between the sexes. It includes straight sex, gay sex, married and unmarried sex, satisfied and frustrated sex, guilty and innocent sex, carnal, platonic, and pathetic sex. Some of the stories are graphic, some ethereal, some hilarious, some tragic. From the cool analysis of Rebecca Goldstein, for whom seduction is a branch of philosophy, to Harold Brodkey's amazing thirty-page description of a single sex act, to fiction by younger writers like Nathan Englander and S. L. Wisenberg beside excerpts from groundbreaking works like Erica Jong's Fear of Flying and Philip Roth's The Counterlife, Neurotica is fiction (and obsession) at its best. Other contributors include Woody Allen, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Henry Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Francine Prose, and Jerzy Kosinski. Neurotica provides entry into intimate dreams and imaginations that can be appreciated by anyone of any faith--or no faith--who has ever had or wished to have sex.

Sex is straight and gay, married and unmarried, satisfied and frustrated, guilty and innocent, carnal and platonic, and pathetic according to the 27 short stories and excerpts from longer works of fiction. Woody Allen, Saul Bellow, Rebecca Goldstein, Erica Jong, Jerzy Kosinski, Bernard Malamud, Henry Roth, and Isaac Bashevis Singer are among those who speak up. Novelist Bukiet thanks his wife for the children he hopes are his.