Dr Axel Staehler, Reader in Comparative Literature, gave an interview on contemporary Jewish literature in the US to Cécile Guérin of the French culture and art magazine Transfuge, which has come out in the November issue as ‘La jeune génération d’écrivains juifs est plus cool’, 72 (Novembre 2013), pp. 84-85.
In the interview, Axel argues the latest generation of American Jewish writers does not face the problems of identity, integration, and assimilation encountered by earlier generations. Indeed, he says, it is cool to be a Jew now:
‘Perhaps this is one reason why there is currently no towering literary personality in evidence, such as that daunting triumvirate of an earlier generation: Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth; not to forget the wonderful and sharp-witted Cynthia Ozick. It is fashionable now to schmooze and to schlepp, to give a spiel and to kvetch; and sure as anything, everyone knows what schlong means, schmuck, and putz. And if you don’t, you should be worried, schmendrick.
Jewish culture in America has spread and been accepted in its various manifestations, sometimes even into the mainstream. The American Jewish writers of the youngest generation, such as Michael Chabon, Dara Horn, Nathan Englander, Shalom Auslander, Steve Stern, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Nicole Krauss – to name but a few of my own favourites – reflect this. They feel secure in both their Jewishness and their Americanness.’
Axel’s research interests include Jewish literature and culture, Holocaust writing, early modern European festival culture, and the eighteenth-century novel as well as postcolonial literature and theory.
To download the magazine, please see the Transfuge website here:
www.transfuge.fr/transfuge-magazine-numero-72-les-romans-de-new-york.html