Facing Black and Jew: Literature as Public Space in Twentieth-Century America

by Adam Zachary Newton

• ISBN13: 9780521658706
• ISBN10: 0521658705
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-08-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

A reading of African American and Jewish American writers from Henry Roth and Ralph Ellison to Philip Roth and David Bradley. Reading the work of such writers alongside and through one another, Newton's book offers an original way of juxtaposing two major traditions in modern American literature, and rethinking the sometimes vexed relationship between two constituencies ordinarily confined to sociopolitical or media commentary alone. Newton combines Emmanuel Levinas's ethical philosophy and Walter Benjamin's theory of allegory in shaping an innovative kind of ethical-political criticism. Through artful, dialogical readings of Saul Bellow and Chester Himes, David Mamet and Anna Deavere Smith, and others, Newton seeks to represent American Blacks and Jews outside the distorting mirror of 'Black-Jewish Relations', and restrictive literary histories alike. A final chapter addresses the Black/Jewish dimension of the O. J. Simpson trial.

Author Biography

Adam Zachary Newton is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xvii
Introduction	1	(168)
The space between black and Jew	1	(14)
History and allegory: a match made in shadow	15	(9)
``An antiphonal game'' and beyond: facing Ralph Ellison and Henry Roth	24	(32)
``Jew me sue me don't you black or white me'': The (ethical) politics of recognition in Chester Himes and Saul Bellow	56	(25)
``Words generally spoil things'' and ``Giving a man final say'': facing history in David Bradley and Philip Roth	81	(30)
Literaturized Blacks and Jews; or Golems and Tar babies: reality and its shadows in John Edgar Wideman and Bernard Malamud	111	(31)
Black--Jewish inflations: face(off) in David Mamet's Homicide and the O.J. Simpson trial	142	(27)
Postface Deja-vu all over again; or, mirrors and the face -- Anna Deavere Smith after Levinas	158	(11)
Notes	169	(35)
Bibliography	204	(10)
Index	214