Madame Bovary (1857), by Gustave Flaubert, the novel in which Kugelmass gets projected, is the story of a young wife of a country doctor who yearns for excitement in her boring rural existence and engages in several illicit affairs.

Philip Roth's comic novel Portnoy's Complaint (1969), also mentioned in the story, is a continuous monologue as narrated by its eponymous speaker, Alexander Portnoy, to his psychoanalyst about his sexual frustrations and escapades. The novel is also a humorous exploration of the Jewish American experience.

The Big Book of Jewish Humor (1981), edited by William Novack, is a collection of Jewish and Jewish-inspired humor from contributors such as Woody Allen, Max Apple, Gary Epstein, Lenny Bruce, Joseph Heller, David Levine, Sam Levenson, G. B. Trudeau, Judith Viorst, S. Gross, Jules Feiffer, and others.

Allen's three collections of humorous prose are brought together in The...