{"id":7356,"date":"2008-11-17T16:16:36","date_gmt":"2008-11-18T00:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=7356"},"modified":"2008-11-17T16:18:12","modified_gmt":"2008-11-18T00:18:12","slug":"what-jewish-writers-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=7356","title":{"rendered":"What Jewish Writers Need"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found this essay provoking<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I knew that serious Jewish-American writers were in trouble several decades ago when I began giving my classes in “Jewish-American Fiction” a chance to vote on their favorite text in a survey course that included a catholic variety of Jewish authors, from Abraham Cahan to Pearl Abraham. The novel that won, hands down, every semester, every year, was Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, <\/em>a perfectly good novel for junior high school readers but not especially challenging, I thought, for college students. Why, I kept wondering, didn’t they choose Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/strong> or Saul Bellow’s Herzog<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong>?<\/em> After mulling this question over for a couple of years, I decided (a) that estimations about art should never be put to a democratic vote; and (b) that I had to discontinue my end-of-semester questionnaire. <\/p>\n

Curiously, I experienced something of the same disappointment when, as one of the judges nominating books for a prestigious Koret prize<\/span><\/a><\/strong>, I watched as Jonathan Safran Foer<\/span><\/a><\/strong> mowed down competition that included Bellow, Cynthia Ozick<\/span><\/a><\/strong>, and Steve Stern<\/span><\/a><\/strong>. A friend of mine tried to console me that pointing out that Foer’s post-modernism appealed to contemporary readers as Bellow and Ozick’s old-fashioned modernism did not. Perhaps, but I think the explanation is simpler: the bulk of those who sent in email votes had read Everything is Illuminated<\/em> but not Ravelstein.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here are some of my interviews and opinions on American-Jewish literature<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found this essay provoking: I knew that serious Jewish-American writers were in trouble several decades ago when I began giving my classes in “Jewish-American Fiction” a chance to vote on their favorite text in a survey course that included … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[14338,14341,14339,14215,14340,14342],"class_list":["post-7356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-literature","tag-abraham-cahan","tag-chaim-potok","tag-cynthia-ozick","tag-jonathan-safran-foer","tag-pearl-abraham","tag-post-modernism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t