Holocaust impiety in Jewish American literature : memory, identity, (post-)postmodernism

Author(s)
    • Krijnen, Joost
Bibliographic Information

Holocaust impiety in Jewish American literature : memory, identity, (post-)postmodernism

by Joost Krijnen

(Postmodern studies, v. 53)

Brill/Rodopi, c2016

  • : hardback : acidfr

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-240) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

The Holocaust is often said to be unrepresentable. Yet since the 1990s, a new generation of Jewish American writers have been returning to this history again and again, insisting on engaging with it in highly playful, comic, and "impious" ways. Focusing on the fiction of Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, and Nathan Englander, this book suggests that this literature cannot simply be dismissed as insensitive or improper. It argues that these Jewish American authors engage with the Holocaust in ways that renew and ensure its significance for contemporary generations. These ways, moreover, are intricately connected to efforts of finding new means of expressing Jewish American identity, and of moving beyond the increasingly apparent problems of postmodernism.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction: Ever After Auschwitz
  • Holocaust Piety, Impiety, and Jewish American Fiction PART I: MEMORY 1. Historical Consciousness and the Americanization of the Holocaust 2. The Dynamic of Distance: The Memory of the Holocaust in Everything Is Illuminated, The History of Love, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay PART II: IDENTITY 3. Jewish American Identity and the Holocaust 4. Inventing Jewish Worlds: Identity, History, and the Holocaust in Everything Is Illuminated, The History of Love, The Ministry of Special Cases, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union PART III: (POST-)POSTMODERNISM 5. Cultivating the Desert: Pragmatist Reconfigurations of Postmodernism 6. Post-Postmodern "Entertainment": The Holocaust and Renewalism in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Everything Is Illuminated, The History of Love, and Great House Afterword: An American Story Bibliography

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