Synopses & Reviews
This unprecedented collection brings together the major Jewish American writers of the past fifty years as they examine issues of identity and how theyve made their work respond.
E.L. Doctorow questions the very notion of the Jewish American writer, insisting that all great writing is secular and universal. Allegra Goodman embraces the categorization, arguing that it immediately binds her to her readers. Dara Horn, among the youngest of these writers, describes the tendency of Jewish writers to focus on anti-Semitism and advocates a more creative and positive way of telling the Jewish story. Thane Rosenbaum explains that as a child of Holocaust survivors, he was driven to write in an attempt to reimagine the tragic endings in Jewish history.
Here are the stories of how these writers became who they are: Saul Bellow on his adolescence in Chicago, Grace Paley on her early love of Romantic poetry, Chaim Potok on being transformed by the work of Evelyn Waugh. Here, too, are Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Erica Jong, Jonathon Rosen, Tova Mirvis, Pearl Abraham, Alan Lelchuk, Rebecca Goldstein, Nessa Rapoport, and many more.
Spanning three generations of Jewish writing in America, these essays — by turns nostalgic, comic, moving, and deeply provocative- constitute an invaluable investigation into the thinking and the work of some of Americas most important writers.
About the Author
Derek Rubin teaches in the American Studies program at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He has lectured widely in the United States, and as a Fulbright Scholar taught Jewish American literature at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Born in South Africa and raised in Israel, he has lived in the Netherlands since 1976.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
Introduction by Derek Rubin
Starting Out in Chicago by Saul Bellow
Clearing My Jewish Throat by Grace Paley
Tradition and (or Versus) the Jewish Writer by Cynthia Ozick
Culture Confrontation in Urban America: A Writer's Beginnings by Chaim
Potok
Deism by E. L. Doctorow
Writing About Jews by Philip Roth
Coming Home by Leslie Epstein
The End of the Jewish Writer? by Alan Lelchuk
Max and Mottele by Max Apple
How I Got to Be Jewish by Erica Jong
Tales of My Great-Grandfathers by Johanna Kaplan
After the Law by Steve Stern
Mein Kampf by Art Spiegelman
Against Logic by Rebecca Goldstein
How I Became a Jewish Writer in America by Jonathan Wilson
Nothing Makes You Free by Melvin Jules Bukiet
Body of Love by Nessa Rapoport
Writing Something Real by Lev Raphael
Living, Loving, Temple-Going by Robert Cohen
Princess by Binnie Kirshenbaum
Divinity School or Trusting the Act of Writing by Pearl Abraham
Law and Legacy in the Post-Holocaust Imagination by Thane Rosenbaum
Forward and Back: A Journey Between Worlds by Jonathan Rosen
Writing with a Return Address by Allegra Goodman
The Davka Method by Rachel Kadish
On Becoming a Russian Jewish American by Lara Vapnyar
Writing Between Worlds by Tova Mirvis
On the Interpretation of Dreams by Dara Horn
When God's Your Favorite Writer by Yael Goldstein