The Great American Chip-on-shoulder

I am so addicted to Star Pirates it's not even funny.

I am also reading my third Philip Roth book, and am enjoying it. It was, however, touch and go for the first 30 pages or so for the simple fact that I am SO DAMN SICK of Jews in Newark and Roth's carbon copied heroes and their carbon copied childhoods. I mean, OK, Zuckermann is your alter ego, and therefore he had a similar childhood to the Philip Roth in The Plot Againt America with the notable omission of sinister Nazi overtones. But oh my god does my face need to be rubbed in it EVERY TIME you write a book? Do I really need the opening pages of "oh and by the way JEW" in order to fully appreciate the rest of your story?

Actually, I can think of a lot of 20th century American writers who do exactly the same thing. Well, I can think of Kerouac and Vonnegut and Brett Easton Ellis, anyway, and extrapolate from them (what can I say, I'm startlingly poorly read in some respects). Parallel autobiographies and fictional alter egos are common, and they're usually quite entertaining, and I do have to concede that every semi-serious writing attempt I've made has also generally been a parallel autobiography so I can't exactly whinge about them being a waste of space. But. If you've got a chip on your shoulder about your national or racial identity... write Trainspotting. Or a Hundred Years of Solitude. Or the Kite Runner. Or, quite frankly, anything that isn't about your Jewish New Jersey wartime childhood. Please.