The Jewish American Novel (review)

A good friend of mine once explained to me that sociology is about proving what everybody assumes to be true. Since he is a professional sociologist himself, I have to assume that contained within the somewhat self-deprecating wit is a profoundly respectful point, not only about sociology but about what it means to ground our assumptions about the world in something other than consensus or a vague belief that certain things are true and other things are not.

I was reminded of my friend's definition of sociology while reading Philippe Codde's Jewish American Novel. Codde's book consists of two discussions, both of which contain a considerable amount of what I would call common knowledge, concerning both literary culture generally and the special circumstances of literary culture for Jewish Americans after the Second World War. These are ideas that I myself grew up with. Yet each one of these discussions presents old issues in new lights, in a way that enriches our understanding of post-War American Jewish writing and helps us understand our understanding in a much more concrete and complex manner. To already put up front my major criticism of the book: its two sections are not sufficiently integrated to produce the cogency that Codde seeks. Yet, each discussion is coherent and compelling in its own right. Together the two prongs of the book's argument produce a collective force greater than the sum of the parts.

The first line of Codde's endeavor concerns the "polysystem theory" of Itamar Even-Zohar. Codde has discussed polysystem theory elsewhere. Here he summarizes it briefly but usefully for readers not familiar with Even-Zohar's work. His concern is to bring together three strands in what Even-Zohar dubs the "cultural repertoire'" (1), in this case, the "French Existentialist Repertoire" (121) as it established itself in the U.S. in the period immediately following World War II. The three strands that Codde weaves together are French existentialism, both in literature and in philosophy; radical, death-of-God, theology; and the Holocaust:

The popularity of French existentialism in the US concurs —not coincidentally . . . —with the so-called Jewish Renaissance, the spectacular rise of the Jewish American novel in the US-American literary system. In order to understand the popularity of French existentialism, and specifically why it struck such a resonant chord with the Jewish American community, I will consider this phenomenon in its broader socio-cultural context. This . . . links the rise of the Jewish American novel to three closely related historical and cultural movements that explain the Jewish intelligentsia's embrace of French existentialism: the Holocaust, radical theory, and the increasing popularity of French existentialism in the US.

(4)

In the second part of the book Codde brings these elements to bear on several works of Jewish American fiction, including early works by two of its most eminent authors, Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud. Codde also discusses lesser-known and less widely discussed writers such as Edward Wallant, Isaac Rosenfeld, Daniel Stern, Jonathan Baumback, and Norma Rosen. In fact, one of the important consequences of Codde's enterprise is that it revisits these less famous writers in such as way that not only do they assume significance in the general American Jewish cultural picture, but they help us reread the tradition's established figures in a more compelling way.

Although, as Codde points out, the Jewish American novel has a history within Jewish literature and American literature, and while both Jewish history (in particular, the Holocaust) and American literature influence the rise of French existentialist thought, nonetheless the influence of French existentialism on Jewish American fiction is, Codde argues, a discrete component of Jewish American literary production. It is also more pervasive than has heretofore been acknowledged.

Perhaps the most skillful of the book's chapters are those dealing with the "four constituent subsystems of the US-American cultural system: the political, the religious, the philosophical, and the literary systems" (32). For Codde these are the most pertinent subsystems for...