Research Catalog

Title

Writing our way home : contemporary stories by American Jewish writers / edited by Ted Solotaroff and Nessa Rapoport.

Publication

New York : Schocken Books, ©1992.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Solotaroff, Ted, 1928-2008.
• Rapoport, Nessa.

Description

xxx, 380 pages; 24 cm

Summary

This extraordinary collection is the first to present the unprecedented range of American Jewish fiction today, from the acclaimed immigrant and post-immigrant masters such as Singer, Bellow, Roth, Ozick, Malamud, and Paley to the new voices of post-acculturation like those of Mark Helprin, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Daphne Merkin, Allegra Goodman, and Adam Schwartz. Writing Our Way Home limns the dramatic transformation of Jewish life in the past three decades. Its stories arise from such developments as the emergence of feminism, the impact of Israel, the broken silence about the Holocaust, the return to - as well as flight from - tradition, and the birth of an egalitarian religious creativity alongside the further advance of assimilation. It also exhibits the writers' growing knowledge of modern and biblical Hebrew, the wellspring of a new Jewish literature. In bringing our consciousness of American Jewish fiction up to date, the editors emphasize the "open literary community" that has come into being. As Ted Solotaroff characterizes it, "the religious and the secular, the experimental and the traditional, the realistic and the surreal cohabit, and even sometimes nuzzle, more or less peaceably." At the same time, the editors find some developments particularly promising, such as the rekindled literary strategies of Judaism employed by writers "culturally confident" enough, as Nessa Rapoport points out, to turn nostalgic stereotypes into archetypes. Rich and provocative in themselves, these twenty-four stories announce that the Jewish imagination in late-twentieth-century America is flourishing in unforeseen and dazzling ways as its authors continue to extend a remarkably adaptive literary tradition across an array of contemporary contexts.

Subject

• American fiction > Jewish authors
• American fiction > 20th century
• Jews > United States > Fiction
• Short stories, American
• Short stories, Jewish
• American fiction
• Jewish fiction
• Jews
• Anthologie
• Juden
• Literatur
• Schriftsteller
• Short stories, American > Jewish authors > 20th century
• American fiction > Jewish authors > 20th century
• United States
• USA
• Juden
• USA

Genre/Form

• Jewish fiction.
• short stories.
• Short stories.
• Fiction.
• Nouvelles.

Contents

The open community / Ted Solotaroff -- Summoned to the feast / Nessa Rapoport -- The eighth day / Max Apple -- Something to remember me by / Saul Bellow -- Deeds of love and rage / Marsha Lee Berkman -- S angel / Michael Chabon -- The writer in the family / E.L. Doctorow -- Variant text / Allegra Goodman -- North light : a recollection in the present tense / Mark Helprin -- Building blocks / Allen Hoffman -- Sickness / Johanna Kaplan -- April 19th, 1985 / Deirdre Levinson -- The silver crown / Bernard Malamud -- Enchantment / Daphne Merkin -- Murderers / Leonard Michaels -- Bloodshed / Cynthia Ozick -- Zagrowsky tells / Grace Paley -- The woman who lost her names / Nessa Rapoport -- The pagan phallus / Robin Roger -- I always wanted you to admire my fasting, or, Looking at Kafka / Philip Roth -- Where is it written? / Adam Schwartz -- The melting pot / Lynne Sharon Schwartz -- The reverse bug / Lore Segal -- A party in Miami Beach / Isaac Bashevis Singer -- Three thousand years of your history ... take one year yourself / Joanna Spiro -- Orchards / Eppie Zore'a.

ISBN

• 0805241108
• 9780805241105
• 0805210091
• 9780805210095

LCCN

92054105

OCLC

• ocm25509666
• 25509666
• SCSB-8950174

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library