Jewish-American Fiction, 1917-1987 (review)

124 SHOFAR Summer 1994 Vol. 12, No.4 Jewish-American Fiction, 1917-1987, by Sanford Pinsker. New York: Twayne, 1992. 167 pp. $22.95. This deft and insightful history ofJewish American fiction spans eighty years, ranging from the literature created by immigrants early in the century to the current native-born literary scene. Beginning in the first chapter with "The Triumphs and Tragedies of Jewish Immigrant Life,» in which he focuses on Abraham Cahan and The Rise of David Levinsky, Pinsker charts the progress ofJewish-American writing, dividing his book into six more chapters that discuss respectively "Novels of Wide Cultural Panorama," "Reflections of the New York Jewish Intellectuals," "Saintly Fools/Sensitive Flops," "Bashing the Jewish-American Suburbs," "Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer and John Updike," and a concluding "New Directions." Pinsker knows his way around this material, having written several books and articles on related aspects, and he draws upon his previous work as he uses this occasion to present both an overview and stimulating analyses of individual writers and tales. His personal view of the issues involved finds its clearest expression in the discussion of John Updike's series of novels about a Jewish protagonist, Blech, and as well the lengthy discussion of Norman Mailer's work. Neither of these writers has been central to the treatment ofJewishAmerican fiction by other critics; for, as Pinsker notes, "Updike, of course, is neither a writer who happens to be Jewish nor a Jew who happens to be a writer." And, while "Mailer has been fascinated by gentiles," Updike "has had moments when he was equally fascinated by Jews, especially if they were Jewish-American writers" (pp. 109-110). Attending to them, Pinsker makes an implicit argument for what constitutes Jewish-American fiction by looking at the boundary conditions that define Mailer's and Updike's work. Situating Jewish-American fiction in this way in the larger literary world of modern culture, Pinsker has provided an important corrective to the conventional views of American literary history prevalent just after World War II. Pinsker reminds us that in the first edition of the standard work, Robert Spiller's American literary history, published in 1948, no Jewish writers were included. Thus, in his book, Pinsker has articulated the ways in which Jewish writers have shouldered their way into modern American literary culture and thus made it possible to recognize their achievement as part of that movement of thought and writing. His own work as a critic is analogous to that of these writers-Pinsker is to criticism what they are to modern Hction. (Pinsker:criticism :: Jewish-American writers:Modern Fiction.) Both then provide new pathways into modern Book Reviews 125 literature and cultural understanding, revising the paradigms that defined the situation in 1948 and taking their places in a renewed modernist American tradition. Except for an insistence that he is writing about Jewish "fictionists" and some odd typographical and amusing spelling errors-early in the book he notes that Isaac Bashevis Singer "was a diplomat among literary diplomats, a man who knew how to generate good press, and to cultivate an adoring pubic" [sic]-this is a book full of good sense and insight, evident for example in the range of sources cited and the ones like Irving Howe, upon whose work he relies. It is also a provocative work, drawing upon wide personal knowledge. The mode Pinsker works in is evaluative and issues in judgments that make us rethink our literary standards. Thus the contrast he draws between the Bloomsbury group and the New York Jewish intellectuals leads him to claim the latter's "quarrels were, and are, infinitely more important" (p. 33). Throughout, Pinsker conceives the story he is telling as one that connects sociology and history; and he is not reticent in bringing literary structure and biographical details together, to their joint illumination. In effect, his is an exemplary work of literary history of a particular kind. The problem, however, is that this kind can acknowledge the impact ofthe work of Cynthia Ozick, for example, but cannot fully grasp the ways in which that work has changed the modernist paradigm. When Pinsker notes that Ozick has mounted an assault on "Gentile...