Author Description

It is Guttmann's thesis that the Jewish writers confronted the American environment as marginal men and women, alienated from their own traditions and from an American society which they ambivalently both celebrated and criticized. The popularity, in the Time magazine sense, of the Jewish writer is a post World War II phenomenon reflecting the fact that American society was catching up with the Jews in that all Americans were becoming marginal and alienated as a consequence of rampant urbanism, industrialism, and the loss of community. Popularity carries with it the germs of reduced creativity for as the Jewish writers "assimilate," the well-springs of their creativity-marginality and alienation-dry up. Guttmann develops an excellent analytical interpretation f the literary works of the many authors he deals with in fleshing out this far from original thesis which owes more to Park and the Chicago school of sociologists than to literary critics. In doing so he often falls into the usual confusions of equating Jewish cultural traits with Judaism-stating that rejection of religion is a rejection of Jewish cultural values.