Larry David, Clown on the Inside
Today on Tablet
July 20, 2011
The neurotic is at war with himself (it’s usually a himself): The conflict between two opposite drives (it’s usually guilt and desire) create a complicated. state of stammering, paralytic, impotent, but also occasionally transcendent being. This, as contributing editor Rachel Shukert points out today in Tablet Magazine, is something that never happens to the character Larry David in HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. We can only understand his masterpiece once we realize that Larry, ever content and sure of himself, is the opposite of neurotic. And the source of his lack of neurosis, moreover, is his total comfort in his own, Jewish skin.
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.
