Promotional Information

Traces 50 years' development of Jewish American fiction, poetry, and humor as it analyzes fictional portrayals of Jews themselves.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword by Leonard W. Dobb Foreword by Jacob Rader Marcus Preface Introduction The Apprentice Years: 1900-1919 Fiction of the 1920s The Depression Years: The 1930s The Jew at War: The 1940s Jewish Anti-Semitism: The Problem of Self-Hate Conclusion Notes Bibliographical Note Index

About the Author

LOUIS HARAP, former editor of Jewish Life, is currently on the editorial board of Jewish Currents.

Reviews

?Harap provides a selective socioliterary survey of works reflecting their particular decade. His discussions range from cursory plot summaries to more extensive analyses. Both a historical and a literary context are furnished in each of the five sections, and the treatment of the Jew is seen through the writings of both Jewish and non-Jewish authors. Contemporary literary criticism frequently accompanies his commentaries. Among the authors authentically depicting acculturation of the first- and second-generation Jew, Harap examines Abraham Cahan, Samuel Ornitz, Meyer Levin, Michael Gold, Daniel Fuchs, and Henry Roth. To the Jewish proletarian novelist of the 1930s, acculturation became synonymous with assimilation into the socialist ideology. John Dos Passos and James T. Farrell are singled out as non-Jewish proletarian writers who objectively depicted the Jews of this period. Harap documents other non-Jewish depictions, which range from the virulent anti-Semitism of Willa Cather and Theodore Dreiser to the ambivalence of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. He traces Faulkner's gradual attitudinal change. Particulary noted is the irony of Jewish novelists addressing the anti-Semitism they themselves encountered in a US Army pitted against the Nazis. Interesting insight is provided in a chapter on Jewish anti-Semitism. Undergraduate and graduate levels.?-Choice

"Harap provides a selective socioliterary survey of works reflecting their particular decade. His discussions range from cursory plot summaries to more extensive analyses. Both a historical and a literary context are furnished in each of the five sections, and the treatment of the Jew is seen through the writings of both Jewish and non-Jewish authors. Contemporary literary criticism frequently accompanies his commentaries. Among the authors authentically depicting acculturation of the first- and second-generation Jew, Harap examines Abraham Cahan, Samuel Ornitz, Meyer Levin, Michael Gold, Daniel Fuchs, and Henry Roth. To the Jewish proletarian novelist of the 1930s, acculturation became synonymous with assimilation into the socialist ideology. John Dos Passos and James T. Farrell are singled out as non-Jewish proletarian writers who objectively depicted the Jews of this period. Harap documents other non-Jewish depictions, which range from the virulent anti-Semitism of Willa Cather and Theodore Dreiser to the ambivalence of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. He traces Faulkner's gradual attitudinal change. Particulary noted is the irony of Jewish novelists addressing the anti-Semitism they themselves encountered in a US Army pitted against the Nazis. Interesting insight is provided in a chapter on Jewish anti-Semitism. Undergraduate and graduate levels."-Choice