Post-War Jewish Fiction: Ambivalence, Self-Explanation and Transatlantic Connections by David Brauner (review)

Abstract

YES, 34, 2004 YES, 34, 2004 participation in various networks of consumption -the presents (the books and vodka he buys for Patsy Southgate and Mike Goldberg in 'The Day Lady Died'), sex, music, painting, gossip, food and drink, and poems (his own and those of his friends),that are the tokensof exchange in the hectic social life he leads in order 'to kill the fear of boredom', to quote from Joe'sJacket', 'the mounting panic of it'. In a capitalistcountry, O'Hara once pointed out, fun is everything;but having fun, as Smith'ssophisticatedreadingsof his majorworksamply illustrate,is no picnic; 'and surelywe shall not continue to be unhappy', he laments in 'Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan andJean-Paul'; 'we shall be happy'. One loves O'Hara as he loved Reverdy 'for saying yes, though I don't believe it'. UNIVERSITY COLLEGELONDON MARK FORD Post-War Jewish Fiction: Ambivalence, Self-Explanation and Transatlantic Connections. By DAVID BRAUNER. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. 2001. xi + 222 pp. /42.50. ISBN:0-333-74035-I. While one might assume that a people that has existed for over three millennia would have a good idea of its identity, this has not necessarilybeen the case as Jewishness has been possible to define in a number of ways. David Brauner's impressive study focuses upon the difficulties and uses made of definitions and how these make themselvesfelt in post-WorldWar II American and BritishJewish fiction, the latter frequently being judged against its more successfulrelation. He statesthat 'the fact that so many (mostlysecular)post-warJewishwritersworryaway at Jewishness like a raw scab in their fiction seems to me a phenomenon worth investigating,and the restof thisbook representsmy attemptto providesome explanations for this phenomenon' (p. 37).Braunersees this 'worryingaway', as a desire for explanation, a need to establishan identity,as fraughtwith ambivalencetoward these writers'Jewishness. It is both a desire to flee what they perceive as Jewish constraintsand a resistanceto losing their difference shame and pride combined. This tension in representingJewishness makes the literature, Brauner states, 'rich and compelling'. One effective way that he develops this sense of the ambivalence and need to explainJewishness is through a discussion ofJewish novelistswho create 'Gentiles who mistake themselves for Jews' (p. 39). In his analysis of five authors' works, including those by Arthur Miller, Bernard Malamud, and Frederick Raphael, Braunershows that the non-Jewishcharacterswho view themselves asJews are all attemptingeither to atone for their own anti-Semitismor make a stand againstdiscrimination in society. Intriguingly,he argues that the novelistswho have created these self-hating characters are 'exploring their own ambivalence towardsJewish identity, a way of explaining themselves through characterswho are, and are not, Jews' (p. 73).This may be overstatingthe imagined psychologicalunderpinningsof the motivation of these authors,but it is an interestingconjecturenone the less. Brauner identifies paranoia and city dwelling as shared attributes in fictional Jewish characters.Temperamentallythey have 'an instinctiveaversionto, Nature in all its guises' (p. 74). Using examples from Saul Bellow and BruceJay Friedman, Howard Jacobson, and Emanuel Litvinoff among others, he identifies an overwhelming feeling of detachment from the pastoraltradition,which dislocatesthese charactersfrom certain core Western values. participation in various networks of consumption -the presents (the books and vodka he buys for Patsy Southgate and Mike Goldberg in 'The Day Lady Died'), sex, music, painting, gossip, food and drink, and poems (his own and those of his friends),that are the tokensof exchange in the hectic social life he leads in order 'to kill the fear of boredom', to quote from Joe'sJacket', 'the mounting panic of it'. In a capitalistcountry, O'Hara once pointed out, fun is everything;but having fun, as Smith'ssophisticatedreadingsof his majorworksamply illustrate,is no picnic; 'and surelywe shall not continue to be unhappy', he laments in 'Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan andJean-Paul'; 'we shall be happy'. One loves O'Hara as he loved Reverdy 'for saying yes, though I don't believe it'. UNIVERSITY COLLEGELONDON MARK FORD Post-War Jewish Fiction: Ambivalence, Self-Explanation and Transatlantic Connections. By DAVID BRAUNER. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. 2001. xi + 222 pp. /42.50. ISBN:0-333-74035-I. While one might assume that a people that has existed for over...