Facing Black and Jew : literature as public space in twentieth-century America / Adam Zachary Newton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Newton, Adam Zachary.

Series:

Cultural margins

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--African American authors--History and criticism.

American fiction.

American fiction--African American authors.

Literature and society--United States--History--20th century.

Literature and society.

Jewish authors.

Political and social views.

African American authors--Political and social views.

African American authors.

United States.

History.

American fiction--Jewish authors--History and criticism.

American fiction--Jewish authors.

Jewish authors--Political and social views.

African Americans--Relations with Jews.

African Americans.

African Americans in literature.

Race relations in literature.

United States--Race relations.

Race relations.

Jews in literature.

Physical Description:

xviii, 218 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Summary:

In Facing Black and Jew, Adam Zachary Newton couples works of prose fiction by African American and Jewish American authors from Henry Roth and Ralph Ellison to Philip Roth and David Bradley. Reading the work of such writers alongside and through one another, Newton's book offers an original way of juxtaposing two major traditions in American literature, and rethinking the sometimes vexed relationship between two constituencies ordinarily confined to sociopolitical or media commentary alone. Newton combines Emmanuel Levinas's ethical philosophy and Walter Benjamin's theory of allegory in shaping an innovative kind of ethical-political criticism. Through artful, dialogical readings of Saul Bellow and Chester Himes, David Mamet and Anna Deavere Smith, and others, Newton seeks to represent American Blacks and Jews outside the distorting mirror of "Black-Jewish Relations," and restrictive literary histories alike. A final chapter addresses the Black/Jewish dimension of the O.J. Simpson trial.

Contents:

1. The space between black and Jew 1

2. History and allegory: a match made in shadow 15

1 "An antiphonal game" and beyond: facing Ralph Ellison and Henry Roth 24

2 "Jew me sue me don't you black or white me": The (ethical) politics of recognition in Chester Himes and Saul Bellow 56

3 "Words generally spoil things" and "Giving a man final say": facing history in David Bradley and Philip Roth 81

4 Literaturized Blacks and Jews; or Golems and Tar babies: reality and its shadows in John Edgar Wideman and Bernard Malamud 111

5 Black-Jewish inflations: face(off) in David Mamet's Homicide and the O.J. Simpson trial 142

Postface Deja-vu all over again; or, mirrors and the face - Anna Deavere Smith after Levinas 158.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 204-213) and index.

ISBN:

0521651069

0521658705

OCLC:

39727619