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SANFORD PINSKER
New Voices and the Contemporary
Jewish-American Novel
n e a r l y
f i f t e e n
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Irving Howe gave expression to his
doubts about most contemporary Jewish-American fiction and
to his gloomy prognosis for its future:
My own view is that American Jewish fiction has probably
moved past its high point. Insofar as this body of writing draws
heavily from the immigrant experience, it must suffer a depletion
of resources, a thinning-out of materials and memories. Other
than in books and sentiment, there just isn’t enough left of that
experience . .. There remains, of course, the problem of “Jew
ishness,” and the rewards and difficulties of definition it may
bring us. But this problem, though experienced as an urgent
one by at least some people, does not yield a thick enough sed
iment of felt life to enable a new outburst of writing about Amer
ican Jews . . . (Howe, 16).
More recently — at a much ballyhooed conference o f Israeli
and Jewish-American writers held at Berkeley (October 1988)
— T heodo re Solataroff made it clear that contemporary Jewish-
American fiction was, indeed, in the bad patch Howe had p re
dicted:
The progress of assimilation has continued to erode the traces
of Jewish mores and ethos. The special angle of vision has blur
red, and Jewish identity as a subject with a moral edge has tended
generally to decline. The development is particularly marked,
as one would expect, in the writers of the present generation
— the David Leavitts and Deborah Eisenbergs (Solotaroff, 1).
T h a t younger Jewish-American writers and critics should dis
agree comes as no surprise. After all, the long-established often
feel that History itself will end when they do while those ju s t
beginning their careers necessarily bank on the fu tu re . About
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