Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T14:36:06.975Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Fiction

from Part II - Genres: Adopting, Adapting, Reinventing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2015

Hana Wirth-Nesher
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
Get access

Summary

This chapter sketches two ways of narrating Jewish American literary history, namely first-person singular narration and third-person narration. Immigrant narratives represent the process of migration and assimilation and help to give shape to an individual's transformation. Gold's Jews without Money, more an unstructured memoir than a novel, is a first-person-singular narrative of twenty-two chronologically arranged vignettes. The year 1934 witnessed an aesthetic revolution in Jewish American fiction with the publication of Henry Roth's Call It Sleep. Roth's new third-person narration takes small David's point of view with strikingly beautiful images. Though the end point in both narrating ways is alienation, the readers have to decide whether the story of increasing assimilation that begins with Antin and Cahan or an alternative story that, inspired by Daniel Deronda, would start with Nyburg's Jewish idealism and Lewisohn's dissimilation might have more resonance today.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Fiction
  • Edited by Hana Wirth-Nesher, Tel-Aviv University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature
  • Online publication: 05 December 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781107261341.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Fiction
  • Edited by Hana Wirth-Nesher, Tel-Aviv University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature
  • Online publication: 05 December 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781107261341.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Fiction
  • Edited by Hana Wirth-Nesher, Tel-Aviv University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature
  • Online publication: 05 December 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781107261341.005
Available formats
×