More and More Equal: The Literary Works of Sami Michael (review)

Hebrew Studies 48 (2007) 410 Reviews return to this section after reading Dauber’s more innovative and animated case studies in Parts 2 and 3. In the field of Yiddish Literature, a recent scholarly thrust has been toward late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Modernism, a moment which, admittedly, produced fascinating literary output. It is therefore all the more important that Dauber has furnished scholars of Jewish Studies and literary criticism with a sensitive study of Mendelssohn, Wolfssohn, and Perl. The book not only offers an overview of the early poetic, linguistic, and social challenges of Yiddish and Hebrew literature; it invites the reader to examine the varied contexts of the Jewish Enlightenment as a means of better understanding Modern Jewish Culture. (Many thanks to Marc Caplan for his consultation.) Amelia Glaser University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA 92037 amglaser@ucsd.edu MORE AND MORE EQUAL: THE LITERARY WORKS OF SAMI MICHAEL. By Nancy E. Berg. Pp. x + 219. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Cloth, $70.00. In her research, Berg tries to dissemble two broad conceptions in criticism of Sami Michael’s work. One is his conception as an ethnic writer, and the other is the conception of his work primarily from an ideological viewpoint . Both of these silence or create an erroneous readings of his work. As the result of these two parallel processes, there is a vacuum in the review of Sami Michael’s work. By bringing him into the category of minority writers, a category that includes various eastern writers of various origins, Michael’s work is banished to the sidelines of literary discussion. In addition, most critics dismiss the poetic elements in Michael’s work as failures and the discussions that they devote to the work are mainly ideological or political discussion that have led to erroneous readings. It seems that these assumptions well explain the structure of Berg’s research, a structure with a main point of returning to a primarily structuralist approach and to a somewhat conservative textual analysis that refrains from all political or ideological discussion. Berg’s book is a journey that follows the development of Sami Michael’s work, an examination of the movement of this work from the sidelines to the center and the manner in which it signals a new voice in the Israeli literary scene. The book addresses the educated writer who is interested in a closer Hebrew Studies 48 (2007) 411 Reviews acquaintance with Michael’s writing—its content, the main dilemmas that arise in it regarding the Israeli existence, the molding of the image of the Other in his work, and so on. In these subjects, the book accomplishes its goals. Berg addresses Michael’s work with great respect. She mainly discusses his adult novels and the novelist’s processes of development and maturation as a writer. Her survey focuses on several aspects germane to the genre of the novel: the structure, the characters, and the language. Another chapter deals with Michael’s literary acceptance and surveys numerous articles written about his various books. Yet another chapter examines the evolution of the novel Water Kissing Water from its initial version, written in the fifties, through its final version, published in 2001. In this interesting discussion, Berg uses genetic criticism, which studies “the drafts, notes, and manuscripts that precedes the published work” (p. 163), to shed a new light on the final version of the novel. The most important achievement of the research lies in its comprehensive—panoramic—presentation of Michael’s work. The chapters present a variety of poetic categories, some structural (structure, characters) and others linguistic or spatial. The book offers a structured discussion that deals with each novel separately while pointing out the developments that can be seen from one novel to the next and the connections built between them. Finally, Berg suggests a comprehensive discussion of the characters of the Other in Michael’s work: the immigrant Mizrachi—Jew, the Arab or Mizrachi woman, and Arab characters from various levels of society. As such, the book is a convenient reference for navigating and browsing Michael’s work. Yet the book’s strength as a reference is also its primary weakness...