Babel and Shapiro

An interesting comparison, relating Russian Jews, gentiles, and war time. So basically: chaos and anti-Semitism. Both men write haunting stories. Not for kids.

Saul Bellow

Found an awesome site today. From a piece ol' Saul wrote a couple years before his death:

"The question whether they had a right to this language and to this literature was a lively question. In their own eyes they sometimes felt that they didn’t have the right because they weren’t born to the manner, and American society—at least its elite Anglo-Saxon elements—told them that they didn’t come by it naturally and that it didn’t really belong to them. But the evidence of the streets was different, because a new life was forming in American society which belonged to nobody, and therefore there was no reason why an American writer should accept the words of Henry James in his book The American Scene, for instance, in which he was so distressed by the Jewish East Side of New York and by what was happening to the English language on the East Side."

I like that claim - English doesn't belong to anyone. In H. Roth's Call It Sleep this is evidenced by all the accents that accompany English and make it truly American, because it is being modified by immigrants. We never hear "proper English" and indeed it doesn't exist.

Holocaust Imbued Consciousness

One way to read IB Singer's The Slave is to consider it thus: it was written by an American after the Second World War, by someone who did not survive the Shoah, and even though the novel's events take place during the 1600s, the fact that they focus on crimes perpetuated against Jews makes the book a piece of Holocaust Literature. This means that the memory of the gas chambers are forever stamped in the brains of all Jews of all future time; it is a universally Jewish event that binds us together through suffering and the remembrance thereof (as have many events throughout our long, horrible history). Writing about the pogroms in Poland in the 17th century was Singer's way of experiencing the Holocaust, and he had to grapple with its effects in order to write the novel; this entails the classic plot of man's search for meaning in the wake of disaster.

To think that Singer's link to the Holocaust is disingenuous would be unfair; he was born in Poland and lost family in the war. But these ties do not account for the high percentage of Jewish fiction writers who focus on the Holocaust: Saul Bellow, Cynthia Ozick and Jonathan Foer being several among many. Critics say the Shoah is an event with which every Jew (and especially the literary ones, as we can see) must grapple and make sense of, if possible.

America

Art thou not Orc, who serpent-form'd
Stands at the gate of Enitharmon to devour her children;
Blasphemous Demon, Antichrist, hater of Dignities;

Lover of wild rebellion, and transgresser of Gods Law;
Why dost thou come to Angels eyes in this terrific form?

...

The terror answerd: I am Orc, wreath'd round the accursed tree:
The times are ended; shadows pass the morning gins to break;
The fiery joy, that Urizen perverted to ten commands,
What night he led the starry hosts thro' the wide wilderness:
That stony law I stamp to dust: and scatter religion abroad
To the four winds as a torn book, & none shall gather the leaves;
But they shall rot on desart sands, & consume in bottomless deeps;
To make the desarts blossom, & the deeps shrink to their fountains,
And to renew the fiery joy, and burst the stony roof.
That pale religious letchery, seeking Virginity,
May find it in a harlot, and in coarse-clad honesty
The undefil'd tho' ravish'd in her cradle night and morn:
For every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life;
Because the soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd.
Fires inwrap the earthly globe, yet man is not consumd;
Amidst the lustful fires he walks: his feet become like brass,
His knees and thighs like silver, & his breast and head like gold.

-William Blake

Hahaha

"Oh well, then what's all the fuss about? I get the drift - whoever killed the non-existent Jesus is guilt-free because Jesus did not really die (I forgot about the resurrection part - my bad.) In fact, it was probably a good thing to kill Jesus so that he could be resurrected, thus fulfilling "God's plan." Did I get it right this time? (Banging head against wall.)

So I will step up and take credit on behalf of the Jews. I admit it, we killed him, and wasn't it a good thing we did? No death, no resurrection and where would you all be then? The seat on the Father's right hand would still be carrying a "Vacant" sign, there would be no one to preside at the Rapture, and none of you Christians would be "saved." So to put the matter to rest once and for all: I did it."

Future Post

I should probably write an entry about the fight I had with a Holocaust survivor concerning books. Hm....

David Roskies (BAMF!) and I talked about this.

New York

Just as Arthur Levy returned to Poland, I return to New York. For me, so many generations removed from my immigrant ancestors, New York resonates deeply, as opposed to Germany or even Israel. Arthur's father was born in Germany; mine in New York.

I'm also reminded of another example, which is not nearly as emotionally or personally or historically laden: Georges Duroy's entrance into Paris to find his fortune. I lack monetary aspirations, but intend to find my fortune nonetheless: in the guises of someone special, someplace special.

I can already see myself living there, being content.

I am doubly diaspora'd, living here in Florida (and neither in Miami nor its lesser cousin, Boca Raton). But I do not see myself as in a diaspora within a diaspora: New York is my Levant. AB Yehoshua may be a smart man, a respected writer -but has he heard of our Moyshe Leibl? Gabriel Preil? Even Philip Roth? If he had lived in New York Yehoshua would not have said that Jews in galut can only be Jews if they live Ha'eretz.