Jewish-American Literature since 1945: An Introductionby Stephen Wade

Irish Association for American Studies

Jewish-American Literature since 1945: An Introduction by Stephen WadeReview by: Bill LazenbattIrish Journal of American Studies, Vol. 8 (1999), pp. 249-254Published by: Irish Association for American StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30002681 .

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Reviews

Stephen Wade, Jewish-American Literature Since 1945: An

Introduction, Edinburgh University Press, 1999. £14.95 pbk.

ISBN 1-85331-226-6

Wade's title is judiciously chosen, since his discussion remains always

at the level of introduction, the survey method of his enquiry leading

him at one stage to confess somewhat helplessly that "limited space in

this survey means that only brief mention can be made to writers

With this approach, compromises must inevitably be made, but, on the

whole, Wade manages to provide a sufficiently comprehensive range of

examples, classifying them both by genre and by gender, the latter an

interesting and I would imagine fairly unusual sub-division within this

type of Jewish overview. After identifying the central position of "the

Bellow - Malamud - Roth trio", he notes that "we have had comparatively

little in print ... on the contributions of Jewish-American women

writers.... The drama has also been somewhat marginalized in this

respect". While his efforts are worthily directed towards correcting this

oversight, his critical judgements are at times rather bland: a sentence

such as "If postmodernism means anything, then it must indicate the

culture of confusing choice" is intellectually limp; while the exclusive

significance he claims for Jewish-American writing hints at the

simplicity behind his overstatement, "after all, this literature is very

special; indeed, it is unique in its combination of energy, revolutionary

dissent and self-reflexive poetic discourse". Really? I am certain that

other vibrant groupings of writers, like those on the contemporary Irish

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Irish Journal of American Studies

scene, or black US women novelists, would lay some claim to the same

attributes.

Those themes of self-definition which the principal triumvirate made

their own Wade nominates as essential to the Jewish-American canon in

general, themes of immigrant experience, dual identity and, finally,

assimilation into "Americanness". He predictably traces a line of

thematic descent from earlier writers like Abraham Cahan and Henry

Roth, but interestingly adds Anzia Yezierska's Hungry Hearts to the list

of Ur-texts. (The Rise of David Levinsky and Call It Sleep feature here as

they do in most primers on the subject.) But just as one swallow doesn't

make a summer, neither do three texts make a "tradition" and Wade

appears to straitjacket himself by adhering too rigidly to his theme of

Jewish-American identity. Even geographically, the limits are narrowly

set: New York's Lower East Side is the locale, anywhere else somehow

aberrant. He dismisses Malamud's A New Life as "unusual" because it

is set in the West, although its Jewish version of the national myth is

surely relevant to his central theme.

The hit-and-run survey method also restricts Wade's reading of the

major novelists. His early discussion is probably best on Bellow,

although even here he ignores key works like The Adventures of Augie

March, which should have been considered carefully in relation to his

stated theme. Also, he relegates that fine novelist Bernard Malamud to

a reading of two short stories and passing reference to one novel.

Important works like The Assistant, The Fixer and The Tenants are

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Reviews

missed completely, though all deal directly with the identity theme.

Indeed, consideration of The Tenants would have opened up an area of

inter-ethnic debate and may have prompted a more contemporary

discussion, as black anti-semitism remains a worrying feature of US life.

In his subsequent discussion of Grace Paley's story "The Long-Distance

Runner" Wade does broach the subject of "comparative ethnicity" but it

is a pity that he does not take the opportunity to synthesise different

versions of it.

The chapters which follow on women writers, drama and poetry are by

far and away the strongest in the book. Wade appears to have used the

better-established or higher-profile writers already mentioned as touch-

stones, assuming their significance without examining their variety, but

he does so more effectively in his consideration of the newer writers,

deftly twining strands of gender and ethnicity in his readings of Jong,

Paley and Olson, or tracing the continuing concern of Jewish-American

drama to define a post-Holocaust consciousness. Arthur Miller rightly

features as a central figure here, but the interpretations of work by

younger playwrights like Mamet and Kushner are insightful and suggest

something of the inventiveness of the drama. It is clearly with

reluctance that the author hurries on to his next topic, lamenting once

more that he "had to omit several outstanding writers, for there should

also be a place for discussion of Neil Simon and the inheritors of the

musical tradition and of social comedy".

251




The poetry of Jewish America in the post-1945 period is, in Wade's view,

less successful and more evasive in dealing directly with the theme of

identity. To discover those who have "retained the Materia Judaica as a

focus for their work", or more precisely, those who have focused on the

Holocaust or Shoah, he summons lesser-known poets like Irena Klepfisz,

Carolyn Forsch6, Dan Pagis and Jerome Rothenberg, all of whom

address the problem of how to find a way of writing poetry about such

dreadful history. Unfortunately, since the work of these younger poets

is not readily available in the UK, the force of Wade's illustrations is not

perhaps as striking as it might be. Though he ends with a discussion of

themes of identity and memory in the more familiar poetry of Adrienne

Rich, he remains unconvinced by Jewish-American poetry in general,

feeling that it lacks the confidence and vision of the stronger genres of

drama and fiction. There is no poet to match the inventiveness of a

Tony Kushner or a Paul Auster, though Zeiger and Forsch6 are exciting

in their shaping of new registers of expression. The problem with this

judgement is that the author restricts the discussion of US Jewish

poetry to his own narrow thematic definition, then criticises it for not

being inventive enoughl While he naturally wants to keep a sharp focus,

he ought to broaden the definition to allow the genre the range which it

clearly does enjoy. Part of the confidence, which he seeks, should be the

poetic confidence to treat subjects other than Jewishness with the

emphasis on poetic technique or ability, rather than maintaining a

claustrophobic post-Holocaust angst.

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Reviews

The need to mediate Jewishness in cultural texts allows for a chapter on

contemporary intellectuals (luftmensch). An odd bunch these,

comprising Cynthia Ozick, Woody Allen, Paul Auster and Leslie Fiedler.

For Wade, all raise questions of how to write about Jewishness: Ozick as

a revisionist seeking a perspective for Jewishness in a secularised,

postmodern world; Allen as purveyor of the filmic schlemiel, who

nevertheless pays more serious attention to intellectualism and the

Jewish concept of family in his prose writings; Auster from a European

perspective, with a Steiner-influenced view of the importance of the Book

as metaphor and symbol of Jewishness; and Fiedler as a "bookman"

whose criticism is archetypally Jewish, since his intellect and his

scholarly domain are his only homeland.

It is with a definition of the Jewish novelist as intellectual that the final

two chapters deal. The lengthy careers of Bellow and Philip Roth are

considered here, or perhaps I should say considered here again. Wade

explains his return to Bellow's work by claiming a division in the opus

between early novels concerned with "Jewishness" and later ones

concerning "intellect". This is not, however, a neat or clear dichotomy,

and though the discussion of representative texts is sensible enough,

readers may be left somewhat confused by the fact that Bellow receives

double - or fractured - attention. And the same is true of the discussion

of Philip Roth's work in the following chapter, which is perhaps even

more chronologically illogical since Wade deals not just with recent

fictions like American Pastoral (1997), but with old standards like When

She Was Good (1967), which actually pre-dates Portnoy's Complaint

253




(1969), the "early" example of Chapter Three. Again this tends to be

structurally confusing and it would appear that a little further thought

about organisational principles might have been appropriate.

However, it is easy to quibble with this type of survey, and to complain

about the time given to one's favourite writers. Why is Malamud so

cursorily treated, and, for that matter, Auster? Where is Doctorow in

the discussion, and where is the radical Jewish tradition which he might

represent? There is no sense of political awareness, let alone radicalism,

even in the passing references to Ginsberg, though surely this deserves

to be mentioned as much as Woody Allen's contemplation of his hapless

navel. But enough! The book is already overladen with the number of

writers Wade does include, and his attempt to be comprehensive

deserves credit, as does the fact that, by limiting his theme, he manages

to trace central features so clearly and to produce a fuller reading of the

tradition than we have yet had. As scholarly apparatus he adds a

"Glossary of Yiddish Terms" and a "Select Bibliography", both of which

are extremely useful. In conclusion, then, this is a worthy introduction

to Jewish-American writing, one which makes up in breadth for what it

at times lacks in depth. It should prove to be a valuable text for

students of the subject.

Bill Lazenbatt

University of Ulster at Jordanstown



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Jewish-American Literature since 1945: An Introductionby Stephen Wade