Routledge Jewish Writers/Irish Writers: Selected Essays on the Love of Words

These essays on representative Jewish and Irish writers are true to the form's definition as an attempt or experiment rather than a credo. Wohlgelernter defines the author's "excited imagination" by thoroughgoing analysis of the work's constituent parts. He gives particular emphasis to the author's own words and expressions, those verbal inventions that linger in the mind long after the act of reading or criticism. He finds a passionate love of words and language forging a powerful link between Jewish and Irish literature, rooted as they are in similar historical experience. Both literatures engage the human struggle with life and death, virtue and weakness, success and failure, dreams and nightmares, all under the constant surveillance of tradition. Wohlgelernter divides his book into four general categories: the Holocaust, Jewish-American writers, Irish writers, and memoirs and autobiography. His chapters on Holocaust literature engage a range of literary perspectives that combine memoir, journalism, fiction, and philosophical reflection in the writings of Ladislas Fuks, Lucy Dawidowicz, Sabine Reichel, and Primo Levi. Chapters on postwar Jewish writers including Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth explore the ambivalences of assimilation with its encroachments of a provincial past and dissatisfactions with mainstream culture. Wohlgelernter notes how all yoke street raciness and high cultural mandarin in a distinctive contribution to American prose style. A similar richness of language and preoccupation with the political and cultural claims of the past characterize the chapters on the great short story writer Frank O'Connor, the playwright Brendan Behan, and the Irish-American journalist and novelist Pete Hamill. The last decades of the twentieth century have seen a prolific outpouring of autobiographical writing, and in the concluding section of the book the author treats representative examples that amplify or reflect on the personal and historical themes encountered in Jewish and Irish fiction: assimilation, personal ambition, intermarriage, and political allegiance. Among the writers treated here are Norman Podhoretz, Calvin Trillin, James McBride, Ari Goldman, and Howard Shack. Wohlgelernter's emphasis on the timeless, recurring themes of literature is matched by a lucidity of style and soundness of method that yield what is central to all criticism, namely insight. Jewish Writers/Irish Writers will be of interest to literary scholars, Jewish studies specialists, and cultural historians. Review "Wohlgelernter is a thoughtful and experienced literary critic. The result is a book of literary criticism that could not have been written by anyone else. The essays are distinctive, challenging, and provocative." "--Jewish Spectator" "Wohlegelernter's unorthodox literary voice certainly deserves to be heard." --Michael P. Kramer, "Studies in Contemporary Jewry Annual XIX" "This gathering of essays and reviews on the varied literary output of Jewish and Irish writers is notable for shrewdness and originality. Wohlgelernter also demonstrates how the travails of two of Europe's most persecuted peoples fueled great literary productivity." --Edward Alexander, University of Washington "This collection reminds us of the wit, wisdom and empathy with which Professor Wohlgelernter has addressed some central themes in twentieth century literature and their contemporary relevance. By juxtaposing Irish and Jewish writers he elicits unusual insights into the problems addressed by both groups and how they confronted twentieth century realities. The result is a set of provocative essays that will richly repay a close reading." --Oscar Handlin, Harvard University "Maurice Wohlgelernter has a passionate love of words. This is amply demonstrated by Jewish Writers/Irish Writers." --Harold Fisch, The Jerusalem Post "Wohlgelernter is a thoughtful and experienced literary critic. The result is a book of li