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5 The Material Narrative: Yezierska, Roth, Ozick, Malamud
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180 five The Material Narrative: Yezierska, Roth, Ozick, Malamud Things entrance, seduce, and for some, even harm selves with higher callings. Abraham Joshua Heschel’s denials of material presence invoked this very allure and power. Yet a deep ambivalence lurked within Heschel’s works, for material things could both undermine and enable holiness in time. The Jewish narratives discussed in this chapter evince none of this ambivalence, but instead offer robust accounts of identities immersed in material objects. If Heschel feared objects, the stories of Yezierska, Roth, Ozick, and Malamud actively engage them. One cannot imagine Malamud’s dark but hopeful characters without the material objects that define and limit their human possibilities. Nor can one account for the vacuousness of suburban Jewish identity in Roth’s “Eli, the Fanatic” without the presence of the black suit. For Ozick, language is a material embodiment of culture, tradition, and history. And Yezierska ’s characters see the world materially. Her narratives of immigrant struggles expose a visual materiality in which American newcomers recognize others through dress. These are narratives of exposure that root American identity in material presence. While Heschel uncovered the material dimensions of holiness despite his fear of idolatry, these Jewish writers celebrate the intimacy between material culture and Jewish identity. American Jewish literature is a broad, even cumbersome field. Literature can do many things, and its various performances have become the material stuff for academic English departments. In recent years, moral and religious philosophers have turned to literary narratives to recover the material narrative · 181 the ethical dimensions of lived lives. The very best work reveals how literary styles invoke imaginative portrayals of the good life. Literature now crosses many borders of inquiry, and helps to soften the frontiers among reading professionals. Still, debates linger about the nature and scope of Jewish literature, and its relation to other ethnic writings. Now there is talk “about many Jewish American literatures,” rather than one unified field of texts.1 Even the terms Jewish and American are in dispute, implying moving targets rather than fixed identities.2 I do not intend to take on these and other disciplinary arguments. My purposes are far more modest regarding material culture and Jewish identity. Through an analysis of carefully chosen short stories and novels by American Jews, I want to expose how these works advance my reading of Heschel as outlined in the preceding chapter. The works discussed here reveal the inescapable allure and presence of material objects for personal identity. To uncover these roots of material presence , I have selected texts, from the 1920s through the 1970s, that fruitfully engage notions of materiality. The list is neither exhaustive nor extensive, for I prefer close readings to broad strokes of analysis. Neither Saul Bellow nor Chaim Potok are included, though they could be, and so too numerous others. The choice has been strategic and ruthless: select those texts that serve to illustrate and develop the argument of this book. I take these works to be Jewish, even though the authors themselves may not accept that claim. For utterly divergent reasons, both Cynthia Ozick and Bernard Malamud, for example, refuse the appellation “Jewish” writer—Ozick because the abyss between art and the commandment against idolatry is too great, and Malamud because it cheapens his stature as creative artist. But their short stories find their place in this study, as do the works of Anzia Yezierska and Philip Roth, because their texts explore dimensions of material culture and Jewish identity in America. Literary narratives often develop characters in relation to the richness of the material world. Narratives can build a scene in which actors work and identify with things. They trace the presence of objects in lived lives, and reveal how objects texture and inform human identity. The narratives of Yezierska, Roth, Ozick, and Malamud uncover the depth and presence of things in human lives. Their stories represent well how American Jews visualize a material world, and their place within it. [34.203.242.200] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:09 GMT) 182 · material culture and jewish thought in america In Yezierska’s short stories and novels, persons interact with and through objects, especially dress, to define borders and expectations. They act materially because they visualize dress as primary visual stuff—it is the first thing they see. Immigrant Jewish culture is visual, and materially so. This is also true for Roth and his portrayal of suburban Jewish life after the Holocaust. Eli, Roth’s representative...