Abstract
Looking at short stories by writers as diverse as Brian Glanville, Ruth Fainlight, Clive Sinclair, Jonathan Wilson, James Lasdun, Gabriel Josipovici, Tamar Yellin, Michelene Wandor, and Naomi Alderman, and extending from the center of Jewish British writing to its margins, this article seeks to locate the defining feature of their ‘Jewish substratum’ in conditions particular to the Jewish post-war experience, and to trace its impact across their thematic plurality which, for the most part, transcends any specifically British concerns that may also emerge, opening up an Anglophone sphere of Jewish writing. More specifically, it is argued that the unease pervading so many Jewish British short stories since the 1970s is a product of, and response to, what may very broadly be described as the Jewish experience and the precarious circumstances of Jewish existence even after the Second World War and its cataclysmic impact. It is suggested that it is prompted in particular by the persistence of the Holocaust and the anxieties the historical event continues to produce; by the confrontation with competing patterns of identification, with antisemitism, and with Israel; and by anxieties of non-belonging, of fragmentation, of dislocation, and of dissolution. Turned into literary tropes, these experiences provide the basis of a Jewish substratum whose articulation is facilitated by the expansion of Jewish British writers into the space of Anglophone Jewish writing. As a result, the Jewish British short story emerges as a multifaceted and hybrid project in continuous progress.
Highlights
Looking at short stories by writers as diverse as Brian Glanville, Ruth Fainlight, Clive Sinclair, Jonathan Wilson, James Lasdun, Gabriel Josipovici, Tamar Yellin, Michelene Wandor, and Naomi
The literary response to the Holocaust emerged only hesitantly in Jewish British writing and has never achieved the prominence it has in contemporary Jewish American literature
Be wrong to limit the perception of Jewish writing and its putative substratum of unease to the response to the Holocaust which, as Jon Stratton puts it, has evolved into “a recognized part of the Western cultural imaginary” and as such has generated literary responses in many different ways and contexts (Stratton 2007, p. 126)
Summary
The literary response to the Holocaust emerged only hesitantly in Jewish British writing and has never achieved the prominence it has in contemporary Jewish American literature It was only since the mid-1950s that writers such as Alexander Baron (1917–1999) and Brian Glanville Both were proponents of what was labeled the “New Wave” of Jewish writing in Britain (Fyvel 1963) In stories such as Baron’s “The Anniversary” (1954) and Glanville’s “The Survivor” (1961), the ineffable nature of the conflagration is explored through its effect on the lives of survivors and bystanders. Fainlight was born in New York City but has lived in England since the immediate post-war period and has in many ways written herself into the literary tradition of her adopted country Her story addresses a topic in relation to the Holocaust which for a long time has remained a Jewish British domain. While there is hope, the latter’s psychological impact—the unease it produces—is not in any way diminished
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