Cyrillic Cycles: Uses of Composite Narrative in the Russian Émigré Fiction of Ellen Litman and David Bezmozgis

The most recent generation of Jewish American authors—those following in the wake created by Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and Cynthia Ozick—has distinguished its voice in various ways. Whether it be through a return to religious orthodoxy, a renewal of folkloric techniques, an awareness of post-Holocaust conundrums, a commitment (or reaction) to Zionist expression, or an engagement with multiculturalism and identity politics, these writers have created a body of writing that defiantly challenges Irving Howe's ill-fated and oft-quoted prediction in 1977—two years after Daniel Walden founded Studies in American Jewish Literature—that Jewish American fiction had reached its high point and, given the twilight of the immigrant experience, was at an impasse (16). The robust narratives of Steve Stern, Allegra Goodman, Nathan Englander, and Dara Horn speak not only to the vitality of Jewish writing in the United States but to the state of American literature as a whole. Yet while many scholars have discussed the distinctive nature of contemporary Jewish American writing on a thematic level—for example, the awareness of religious custom, the Holocaust, Israel, postmodern culture¹—few have noted any distinctiveness of form. And while it would be erroneous to hold that this most recent generation has privileged a particular genre of writing, it would not be inaccurate to suggest that, with those who create fiction, the narrative cycle has been represented inordinately.

A cursory look at the output of Jewish American authors since the mid-1980s reveals a striking tendency toward the cycle form.² This is especially the case with first works of fiction, where writers initially establish their voices and, in the process, build a literary beachhead. Now prominent authors such as Goodman, Michael Chabon, Thane Rosenbaum, Nathan Englander, and Melvin Jules Bukiet all relied on the genre when publishing their first or second books.³ And although in many cases these authors' works have been marketed and reviewed as collections of stories, or in some cases novels, a closer reading of the texts would suggest that they actually function as short-story cycles, a vibrant yet relatively neglected hybrid genre that possesses characteristics of both the traditional story collection and the more conventional novel. It stands out from the former in that the various narratives composing the text are significantly linked in some way. Whereas the individual stories in most traditional collections are disparate and unique, the components that make up a story cycle maintain a consistency in terms of character, setting, chronology, imagery, and even theme. In this way, story cycles encourage a more novelistic reading, since the narratives more directly, or more naturally, flow one from the other or build upon one another. Yet they stand out from traditional novels in that the narrative unity among their various segments—the stories or "chapters"—is much weaker. In this way, a specific story within a cycle can easily stand on its own (such as in an anthology or a reader) outside of the collection, whereas a chapter of a novel could lose much of its meaning or impact when extricated from its context.

An equally notable phenomenon in recent Jewish American writing has been the arrival of Russian émigrés. Authors such as Gary Shteyngart, Anya Ulinich, Lara Vapnyar, Michael Idov, Olga Grushin, and Sana Krasikov have distinguished themselves through a series of well-received fiction and, as a result, are now read as a curious subset of contemporary Jewish American literature.⁴ Perhaps most significant, these authors have brought back to the fore many of the essential themes that first marked Jewish American writing: the in-between status of the immigrant, struggles between old world and new world mentality, guilt and shame generated by intergenerational conflicts, and ethno-religious marginalization. These are, interestingly enough, many of the characteristics that Irving Howe lamented as increasingly scarce in contemporary Jewish fiction. What is more, they largely define the works of two particular Jewish Russian émigrés, Ellen Litman and David Bezmozgis, writers who have used the short-story cycle form in...