Unfinalized Moments: Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Fiction

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to Daniel Morris and Zev Garber, co-editors of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. This volume actually began in a special issue I guest edited in 2004. Dan, in particular, was instrumental in helping to bring this about. I had attended graduate school at Purdue University, where Dan teaches, but I did not have the pleasure of taking a class with him while there. Still, we became friends and colleagues during my coursework, and it was Dan’s encouragement and support that led to the guest editorship of that special issue of Shofar after my graduation. When I decided to develop that issue and expand it into a book-length collection of essays, I turned to Zev. In overseeing the Shofar Supplements series at Purdue University Press, he has been both a helpful editor and a source of collegial inspiration. A hearty “thank you” as well to my editors and contacts at both the Shofar offices and at Purdue University Press. Nancy Lein, Shofar’s managing editor, was indispensible in pulling together the 2004 special issue of Shofar—indeed, she taught me what it means to step into someone else’s shoes and guest edit a journal—and she has continued to help me in my various scholarly endeavors. Charles T. Watkinson, the director of Purdue University Press, has been supportive in a many ways, and not only in getting me to complete this volume. I also have the luck of working closely with him and his production editor, Katherine Purple, as the executive editor of Philip Roth Studies. Their keen insights and friendly working demeanor have made working on this manuscript a pleasure. I would particularly like to thank Rebecca Corbin and Dianna L. Gilroy at the press for all of the work they have put into this project. And a good part of that “work” has been putting up with my schedule and the hazards that come from my frantic multitasking. I would like to acknowledge as well the many people who have contributed to my development as a writer and as a scholar. They are too many to list—and a number of them grace the pages of Unfinalized Moments—but I feel the need to mention a few names. Robert Paul Lamb, ol’ Bob, was my mentor in gradu- x derek parker royal ate school, and even though Jewish American literary studies is nowhere near his field, he, more than anyone, encouraged me to pursue this community of writers in the early days of my graduate career. Others who have nurtured my passion for Jewish American writing include Daniel Walden, who gave me my first chance to publish on the topic; Victoria Aarons, a friend who has served as a role model of professionalism; Gloria Cronin, and the late Ben Siegel, who together tag-teamed to make sure I participated regularly in the (relatively small) community of Jewish American literary scholars; Jay L. Halio, the former director of University of Delaware Press, who helped to introduce me to the publishing business; and Sandor Goodhart, another of those graduate school professors whose scholarship in Jewish American literary studies has served as a beacon, and whom I can call friend. The following essays in this volume were originally printed in the special issue on contemporary Jewish American narrative in Shofar (22, no. 3 [Spring 2004]), most in shorter form, and reprinted with permission: Susan Jacobowitz, “‘Hardly There Even When She Wasn’t Lost’: Orthodox Daughters and the ‘Mind-Body’ Problem in Modern American Fiction.” Michael Martin, “The Ethics of After: Melvin Jules Bukiet, Holocaust Fiction, and the Reemergence of an Ethical Sense in the Post-Holocaust World.” Lee Behlman, “The Escapist: Fantasy, Folklore, and the Pleasures of the Comic Book in Recent Jewish American Holocaust Fiction.” Adam Meyer, “Putting the ‘Jewish’ Back in ‘Jewish American Fiction ’: An Allegorical Reading of Nathan Englander’s ‘The Gilgul of Park Avenue.”” Adam Sol, “‘Were it Not for the Yetzer Hara’: Eating, Knowledge, and the Physical in Jonathan Rosen’s Eve’s Apple.” Also, a shorter version of Michael Schuldiner’s “The Second Generation Holocaust Survivor: Third-Degree Metalepsis and Creative Block in Art Spiegelman’s Maus” appeared in Studies in American Jewish Literature (21 [2002]). ...