Unfinalized moments : essays in the development of contemporary Jewish American narrative / edited by Derek Parker Royal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Royal, Derek Parker, 1963-

Series:

Shofar supplements in Jewish studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American fiction.

American fiction--Jewish authors.

Jews--United States--Intellectual life.

Jews.

United States.

Intellectual life.

Jews in literature.

Physical Description:

x, 267 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

West Lafayette, Ind. : Purdue University Press, [2011]

Summary:

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 narrative. Book jacket.

Contents:

Hardly there even when she wasn't lost": Orthodox daughters and the "mind-body problem" in contemporary Jewish American fiction / Susan Jacobowitz

Southern discomfort: revisiting the Jewish question in Tova Mirvis's The ladies auxiliary / Maya Socolovsky

The ethics of after: Melvin Jules Bukiet, Holocaust fiction, and the reemergence of an ethical sense in the post-Holocaust world / Michael J. Martin

The second-generation Holocaust nonsurvivor: third-degree metalepsis and creative block in Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus / Michael Schuldiner

"Unfinished business": journeys to Eastern Europe in Thane Rosenbaum's Second hand smoke and Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is illuminated / Jennifer M. Lemberg

The escapist: fantasy, folklore, and the pleasures of the comic book in recent Jewish American Holocaust fiction / Lee Behlman

A tale told about idiots: the Chelm story and Holocaust representation / Alexis Wilson

Laughter and trembling: the short fiction of Steve Stern and Nathan Englander / Monica Osborne

Metafictional witnessing in Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is illuminated / Tracy Floreani

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

"Were it not for the Yetzer Hara": eating, knowledge, and the physical in Jonathan Rosen's Eve's apple / Adam Sol

The sweetheart is outside herself: writing the contemporary Jewish American writer in S.L. Wisenberg's Ceci Rubin stories / Joe Kraus

Jewish American fiction on the border: culture confrontations, double consciousness, and hybridity in the work of Pearl Abraham / Bart Lievens

Margins within the margins: an interview with Ruth Knafo Setton and Farideh Dayanim Goldin / Derek Parker Royal

Picturing American stories: an interview with Ben Katchor / Derek Parker Royal.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-250) and index.

ISBN:

9781557535849

1557535841

9781612491622

1612491626

9781612491639

1612491634

OCLC:

706019519