The topic of Jews and obscenity is one of the most difficult for a writer to take as his subject. There is the shadow of Nazi ideology, the fact of Jewish involvement in erotica distribution, and the controversial fiction and film by artists with the courage to involve themselves with the most taboo aspects of human motivation.

Writers like Philip Roth, pornographers like Al Goldstein, psychologists such as Wilhelm Reich, humorists like Larry David, cartoonists like Jules Feiffer (just out: Kill My Mother), and fighters against censorship such as Barney Rosset and Samuel Roth are individuals who make many Jewish people embarrassed. Subjects such as incest, four-letter words, circumcision, and abortion, as well as bigotry that rises to the level of equating a Jewish body with degeneracy, all produce reticence. It is the accomplishment of Josh Lambert that he has produced a compulsively readable, coolly analytical and exceptionally thorough discussion of these subjects, and has organized it into segments of irresistible interest.

Regarding censorship legislation, Lambert considers sexually explicit literature against the backgrounds of rabbinical law; premodern and modern writing in Yiddish and English; and the presence of increasing opportunity for American Jews to gain prestige as lawyers, publishers, and reviewers. He considers the various approaches of all three of the latter, and their readers, to obscenity. He does this in the context of Jewish American status as a minority seeking to realize the American Dream. For example, he considers the position that sexually explicit works should be legally distributed if the average citizen can benefit (and has benefited). Jurists such as Jerome Frank dissented. (Lambert might also have mentioned Frank's questioning whether the concept of “clear and present danger” had been mistakenly applied to erotica distribution.) Frank recognized that the concept of the “average man” excludes minority-group beliefs and traditions regarding sexual customs and erotic-focussed literature. Lambert cogently shows the importance of Frank's dissent in the context of beat writings, considered offensive to the “average adult” but revolutionary to the avant-garde. It is this kind of cultural and cross-cultural depth that makes Unclean Lips a special work.

There is and has been considerable Jewish presence in erotica distribution. It has a lot to do with the willingness of immigrant people to do jobs that established citizens need not engage in. Lambert's approach to this fact is exemplary. He points out that the presence of risky Jewish publishers led to their attainment of prestige as well as profits. The “speaker's benefit” of Horace Liveright or the Boni Brothers in stepping forward to fight censorship brought many modernist writers into their employ. It was indeed risky. Thomas Seltzer fought the court ruling against his editions of books on psychoanalysis and prostitution, and D. H. Lawrence's reputation in America was largely Seltzer's doing. But he ran out of money, could not continue his legal fight, and was abandoned by Lawrence, who then called him a “Judas,” “up to tricks.” Ironically, Alfred Knopf, who was cautious in exercising his speaker's benefit in favor of free expression, became Lawrence's publisher. Of course, as Lambert makes quite clear, the speaker's benefit not only could enhance cultural capital, but was dependent on its twin, money. Lack of a beginning investment could turn an ambitious but wildly risky man such as Samuel Roth to distinctly abrasive, illegal practices, such as porno publishing. No speaker's benefit for him, although he protested that bitterly.

Lambert considers obscenity part of the deep consciousness of individuals. See his section on the modernist Yiddish writers' dilemma regarding “Modesty and Transgression” (his section title). Much of the nuanced insight comes from Lambert's skill at discussing works of writers and artists such as Henry Roth, Philip Roth, Edward Lewis Wallant, Wil Eisner, and Jules Feiffer, not only in the context of obscenity laws or anti-Semitism, but in the light of their characters’ awareness of their personal identities and reputations. His discussion of Henry Roth is especially stirring. As an old man with a writer's block (after Call It Sleep) and a computer he dubbed “Ecclesias,” Roth could contemplate transmigration of shame into art by recalling the four-letter words and sexual depredation of his formative years. The drive for salvation by embracing one's personal degradation is as powerful as Elijah's unclean lips and the manner in which they were cleansed. The uncleanliness is not to be censored. That would be succumbing to the censor, and to death of the spirit.

The ability of a scholar to bring together this kind of explication and to present it in the light of “Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture” is quite an accomplishment. In addition, Lambert's analysis of novels as varied as Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, Adele Wiseman's Crackpot, Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, and Robert Rimmer's The Harrad Experiment deserves additional kudos. Josh Lambert's prose is far more accessible than that of many scholarly writers. His JPS Guide to American Jewish Fiction (2009) is by far the best reference book on the subject.