Unfinalized Moments

Description

Focusing on a diversely rich selection of writers, the pieces featured in Unfinalized Moments: Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Narrative explore the community of Jewish American writers who published their first book after the mid-1980s. It is the first book-length collection of essays on this subject matter with contributions from the leading scholars in the field. The manuscript does not attempt to foreground any one critical agenda, such as Holocaust writing, engagements with Zionism, feminist studies, postmodern influences, or multiculturalism. Instead, it celebrates the presence of a newly robust, diverse, and ever-evolving body of Jewish American fiction. This literature has taken a variety of forms with its negotiations of orthodoxy, its representations of a post-Holocaust world, its reassertion of folkloric tradition, its engagements with postmodernity, its reevaluations of Jewishness, and its alternative delineations of ethnic identity. Discussing the work of authors such as Allegra Goodman, Michael Chabon, Tova Mirvis, Rebecca Goldstein, Pearl Abraham, Jonathan Rosen, Nathan Englander, Melvin Jules Bukiet, Tova Reich, Sarah Schulman, Ruth Knafo Setton, Ben Katchor, and Jonathan Safran Foer, the fifteen contributors in this collection assert the ongoing vitality and ever-growing relevancy of Jewish American fiction.
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Unfinalized Moments: Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Narrative

Part 1: Dialogues with Orthodoxy and History

1 “Hardly There Even When She Wasn’t Lost”: Orthodox Daughters and the “Mind-Body Problem” in Contemporary Jewish American Fiction, by Susan Jacobowitz

2 Southern Discomfort: Revisiting the Jewish Question in Tova Mirvis’s The Ladies Auxiliary, by Maya Socolovsky

3 The Ethics of After: Melvin Jules Bukiet, Holocaust Fiction, and the Reemergence of an Ethical Sense in the Post-Holocaust World, by Michael J. Martin

4 The Second-Generation Holocaust Nonsurvivor: Third-Degree Metalepsis and Creative Block in Art Spiegelman’s Graphic Novel Maus, by Michael Schuldiner

5 “Unfinished Business”: Journeys to Eastern Europe in Thane Rosenbaum’s Second Hand Smoke and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, Jennifer M. Lemberg

Part 2: Folklore, Fantasy, and the Metanarrative

6 The Escapist: Fantasy, Folklore, and the Pleasures of the Comic Book in Recent Jewish American Holocaust Fiction, by Lee Behlman

7 A Tale Told about Idiots: The Chelm Story and Holocaust Representation, by Alexis Wilson

8 Laughter and Trembling: The Short Fiction of Steve Stern and Nathan Englander, by Monica Osborne

9 Metafictional Witnessing in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, by Tracy Floreani

Part 3: (Re)inscribing Jewish Text and Identity

10 Putting the “Jewish” Back in “Jewish American Fiction”: A Look at Jewish American Fiction since 1977 and an Allegorical Reading of Nathan Englander’s “The Gilgul of Park Avenue”, by Adam Meyer

11 “Were it Not for the Yetzer Hara”: Eating, Knowledge, and the Physical in Jonathan Rosen’s Eve’s Apple, by Adam Sol

12 The Sweetheart Is Outside Herself: Writing the Contemporary Jewish American Writer in S. L. Wisenberg’s Ceci Rubin Stories, by Joe Kraus

13 Jewish American Fiction on the Border: Culture Confrontations, Double Consciousness, and Hybridity in the Work of Pearl Abraham, by Bart Lievens

Part 4: Authors in Their Own Words

14 Margins within the Margins: An Interview with Ruth Knafo Setton and Farideh Dayanim Goldin, by Derek Parker Royal

15 Picturing American Stories: An Interview with Ben Katchor, by Derek Parker Royal

Questions for Discussion

Contemporary Jewish American Fiction: A Selected Bibliography

Contributors

Index

Sujets

• Jewish Studies
• Social Science

Informations

• Publié par: Purdue University Press
• Date de parution: 06 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612491639
• Langue: English

Extrait

Unfinalized Moments
Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Narrative
Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies
Zev Garber, Editor
Los Angeles Valley College
Unfinalized Moments
Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Narrative
Edited by Derek Parker Royal
Purdue University Press / West Lafayette, Indiana
Copyright 2011 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Royal, Derek Parker, 1963-
Unfinalized moments : essays in the development of contemporary Jewish American narrative / Derek Parker Royal.
p. cm. -- (Shofar supplements in Jewish studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55753-584-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-61249-162-2 (epdf) -- ISBN 978-1-61249-163-9 (epub) 1. American fiction--Jewish authors--History and criticism. 2. Jews--United States--Intellectual life. 3. Jews in literature. I. Title.
PS153.J4R69 2011
813’.54098924--dc23
2011036985
Cover drawing by Ben Katchor © 2011. Detail from The Carbon Copy Building .
Images from the CD-ROM edition of The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman. Copyright © 1994 by Art Spiegelman, used with permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.
Image from the cover of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories © 1996 Ben Katchor; from Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories © 1995 Ben Katchor; from The Jew of New York © 1998 Ben Katchor; from weekly installment of Shoehorn Technique © 2006 Ben Katchor; from full-page story in Metropolis magazine, “The Decorative Impulse” © 2001 Ben Katchor; from full-page strip in Metropolis magazine, “The Call of the Wall” © 2003 Ben Katchor.
Dedication
To Daniel Walden, the grandfather of Jewish American literary studies.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Unfinalized Moments: Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Narrative
Part 1: Dialogues with Orthodoxy and History
1         “Hardly There Even When She Wasn’t Lost”: Orthodox Daughters and the “Mind-Body Problem” in Contemporary Jewish American Fiction
Susan Jacobowitz
2           Southern Discomfort: Revisiting the Jewish Question in Tova Mirvis’s The Ladies Auxiliary
Maya Socolovsky
3           The Ethics of After: Melvin Jules Bukiet, Holocaust Fiction, and the Reemergence of an Ethical Sense in the Post-Holocaust World
Michael J. Martin
4           The Second-Generation Holocaust Nonsurvivor: Third-Degree Metalepsis and Creative Block in Art Spiegelman’s Graphic Novel Maus
Michael Schuldiner
5         “Unfinished Business”: Journeys to Eastern Europe in Thane Rosenbaum’s Second Hand Smoke and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated
Jennifer M. Lemberg
Part 2: Folklore, Fantasy, and the Metanarrative
6           The Escapist: Fantasy, Folklore, and the Pleasures of the Comic Book in Recent Jewish American Holocaust Fiction
Lee Behlman
7           A Tale Told about Idiots: The Chelm Story and Holocaust Representation
Alexis Wilson
8           Laughter and Trembling: The Short Fiction of Steve Stern and Nathan Englander
Monica Osborne
9           Metafictional Witnessing in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated
Tracy Floreani
Part 3: (Re)inscribing Jewish Text and Identity
10         Putting the “Jewish” Back in “Jewish American Fiction”: A Look at Jewish American Fiction since 1977 and an Allegorical Reading of Nathan Englander’s “The Gilgul of Park Avenue”
Adam Meyer
11         “Were it Not for the Yetzer Hara ”: Eating, Knowledge, and the Physical in Jonathan Rosen’s Eve’s Apple
Adam Sol
12         The Sweetheart Is Outside Herself: Writing the Contemporary Jewish American Writer in S. L. Wisenberg’s Ceci Rubin Stories
Joe Kraus
13         Jewish American Fiction on the Border: Culture Confrontations, Double Consciousness, and Hybridity in the Work of Pearl Abraham
Bart Lievens
Part 4: Authors in Their Own Words
14         Margins within the Margins: An Interview with Ruth Knafo Setton and Farideh Dayanim Goldin
Derek Parker Royal
15         Picturing American Stories: An Interview with Ben Katchor
Derek Parker Royal
Questions for Discussion
Contemporary Jewish American Fiction: A Selected Bibliography
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to Daniel Morris and Zev Garber, co-editors of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies . This volume actually began in a special issue I guest edited in 2004. Dan, in particular, was instrumental in helping to bring this about. I had attended graduate school at Purdue University, where Dan teaches, but I did not have the pleasure of taking a class with him while there. Still, we became friends and colleagues during my coursework, and it was Dan’s encouragement and support that led to the guest editorship of that special issue of Shofar after my graduation. When I decided to develop that issue and expand it into a book-length collection of essays, I turned to Zev. In overseeing the Shofar Supplements series at Purdue University Press, he has been both a helpful editor and a source of collegial inspiration.
A hearty “thank you” as well to my editors and contacts at both the Shofar offices and at Purdue University Press. Nancy Lein, Shofar ’s managing editor, was indispensible in pulling together the 2004 special issue of Shofar —indeed, she taught me what it means to step into someone else’s shoes and guest edit a journal—and she has continued to help me in my various scholarly endeavors. Charles T. Watkinson, the director of Purdue University Press, has been supportive in a many ways, and not only in getting me to complete this volume. I also have the luck of working closely with him and his production editor, Katherine Purple, as the executive editor of Philip Roth Studies . Their keen insights and friendly working demeanor have made working on this manuscript a pleasure. I would particularly like to thank Rebecca Corbin and Dianna L. Gilroy at the press for all of the work they have put into this project. And a good part of that “work” has been putting up with my schedule and the hazards that come from my frantic multitasking.
I would like to acknowledge as well the many people who have contributed to my development as a writer and as a scholar. They are too many to list—and a number of them grace the pages of Unfinalized Moments —but I feel the need to mention a few names. Robert Paul Lamb, ol’ Bob, was my mentor in gradu ate school, and even though Jewish American literary studies is nowhere near his field, he, more than anyone, encouraged me to pursue this community of writers in the early days of my graduate career. Others who have nurtured my passion for Jewish American writing include Daniel Walden, who gave me my first chance to publish on the topic; Victoria Aarons, a friend who has served as a role model of professionalism; Gloria Cronin, and the late Ben Siegel, who together tag-teamed to make sure I participated regularly in the (relatively small) community of Jewish American literary scholars; Jay L. Halio, the former director of University of Delaware Press, who helped to introduce me to the publishing business; and Sandor Goodhart, another of those graduate school professors whose scholarship in Jewish American literary studies has served as a beacon, and whom I can call friend.
The following essays in this volume were originally printed in the special issue on contemporary Jewish American narrative in Shofar (22, no. 3 [Spring 2004]), most in shorter form, and reprinted with permission:
Susan Jacobowitz, “‘Hardly There Even When She Wasn’t Lost’: Orthodox Daughters and the ‘Mind-Body’ Problem in Modern American Fiction.”
Michael Martin, “The Ethics of After: Melvin Jules Bukiet, Holocaust Fiction, and the Reemergence of an Ethical Sense in the Post-Holocaust World.”
Lee Behlman, “The Escapist: Fantasy, Folklore, and the Pleasures of the Comic Book in Recent Jewish American Holocaust Fiction.”
Adam Meyer, “Putting the ‘Jewish’ Back in ‘Jewish American Fiction’: An Allegorical Reading of Nathan Englander’s ‘The Gilgul of Park Avenue.””
Adam Sol, “‘Were it Not for the Yetzer Hara’: Eating, Knowledge, and the Physical in Jonathan Rosen’s Eve’s Apple .”
Also, a shorter version of Michael Schuldiner’s “The Second Generation Holocaust Survivor: Third-Degree Metalepsis and Creative Bloc