Synopses & Reviews
In
Imagining the Holocaust, Daniel R. Schwarz examines widely read Holocaust narratives which have shaped the way we understand and respond to the events of that time. He begins with first person narratives - Wiesel's
Night and Levi's
Survival at Auschwitz - and then turns to searingly realistic fictions such as Borowski's
This Way to the Gas Chamber, Ladies and Gentlemen, before turning to the Kafkaesque parables of Appelfeld and the fantastic cartoons of Spiegleman's
Maus books. Schwarz argues that as we move further away from the original events, the narratives authors use to render the Holocaust horror evolve to include fantasy and parable, and he shows how diverse audiences respond differently to these highly charged and emotional texts.
Review
"...[S]hould be considered essential reading....his literary analysis gives us new approaches to studying [the Holocaust]." --
Holocaust
About the Author
Daniel R. Schwarz is Professor of English at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His books include
Reconfiguring Modernism: Explorations in the Relationship Between Modern Art and
Reading Joyce's Ulysses. Table of Contents
Introduction: The Ethics of Imagining the Holocaust: Representation, Responsibility, and Reading *
Part I: Memoirs * The Ethics of Reading Wiesels Night * Painful Memories: The Agony of Primo Levi * World Into Words:
The Diary of Anne Frank and Sophie Goetzel-Leviathans
The War from Within *
Part II: Realism * Tadeusz Borowskis
This Way to the Gas Chambers, Ladies and Gentlemen, and Other Stories * John Herseys
The Wall : Fiction as History in the First Generation of Holocaust Fiction * Popular Fiction: Gerald Greens
Holocaust: A Novel of Survival and Triumph * Beyond the Camps: Kosinskis
The Painted Bird * The Ontological Problems of Docufiction: William Styrons
Sophies Choice/i * Kineallys and Spielbergs Schindlers List : Realistic Novel into Epic Film *Part III: Myth, Parable, and Fable * Schwarz-Barts Mythopoeic and Historical Humanism: The Last of the Just * Aharon Appelfelds Parables * Illuminating Distortion and Historical Cartoon: Leslie Epsteins King of the Jews * Part IV: Fantasy * The Comic Grotesque of Spieglemans Maus * Cynthia Ozicks Fables: “The Shawl” and “Rosa” * Bruno Schulzs Nightmare in The Street of Crocodiles and Sanitarium Under the Sign of the Hourglass and Cynthia Ozicks Response in The Messiah of Stockholm