The schlemiel as metaphor: studies in Yiddish and American Jewish fiction

430 Pages·1991·1.05 MB·English

by  Sanford Pinsker

The Schlemiel As Metaphor : Studies in
title:
Yiddish and American Jewish Fiction
author: Pinsker, Sanford.
publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0809315815
print isbn13: 9780809315819
ebook isbn13: 9780585186375
language: English
Schlemiel in literature, Yiddish literature--
History and criticism, American literature--
subject
Jewish authors--History and criticism, Jews
in literature, Metaphor.
publication date: 1991
lcc: PJ5124.P5 1991eb
ddc: 813.009/352
Schlemiel in literature, Yiddish literature--
History and criticism, American literature--
subject:
Jewish authors--History and criticism, Jews
in literature, Metaphor.
Page iii
The Schlemiel as Metaphor
Studies in Yiddish and American Jewish Fiction
Revised and Enlarged Edition
Sanford Pinsker
Southern Illinois University Press
Carbondale and Edwardsville
Page iv
The Schlemiel as Metaphor: Studies in Yiddish and American Jewish
Fiction is a revised and enlarged edition of the text originally entitled
The Schlemiel as Metaphor: Studies in the Yiddish and American
Jewish Novel, by Sanford Pinsker, copyright © 1971 by Southern
Illinois University Press.
Revised and enlarged edition copyright © 1991 by The Board of
Trustees, Southern Illinois University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Edited by Mara Lou Hawse
Designed by Shannon M. McIntyre
Production supervised by Natalia Nadraga
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pinsker, Sanford.
The schlemiel as metaphor : studies in Yiddish and American
Jewish fiction / Sanford Pinsker.Rev. and enl. ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Schlemiel in literature. 2. Yiddish literatureHistory and criti-
cism. 3. American literatureJewish authorsHistory and criti-
cism. I. Title.
PJ5124.P5 1991
813.009'352dc20 90-9980
ISBN 0-8093-1581-5 CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Page v
For Matt and Beth, who required no revisions whatsoever
Page vii
Contents
Preface to the Revised Edition ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1 1
The Schlemiel's Family Tree
2 17
"If I Were a Rich Man": Mendele and Sholom Aleichem
3 37
The Schlemiel on Main Street
4 48
The Isolated Schlemiels of Isaac Bashevis Singer
5 77
The Schlemiel as Moral Bungler: Bernard Malamud's
Ironic Heroes
6 111
Saul Bellow's Lovesick Schlemiels
7 145
Philip Roth: The Schlemiel as Fictional Autobiographer
8 163
Woody Allen's Lovably Anxious Schlemiels
9 176
Conclusion
Notes 183
Index 189
Page ix
Preface to the Revised Edition
Rereading the first edition of The Schlemiel as Metaphor twenty years
after I had written it, I am reminded of what Benjamin Franklin says
about the errata one collects over a lifetime: "I should have no
Objection [Franklin writes in the opening page of his Autobiography]
to a Repetition of the same Life from its Beginning, only asking the
Advantage Authors have in a second Edition to correct some Faults of
the First."
This revised and expanded version affords me the opportunity not of
repeating my "life" but of tempering an excess here, a misimpression
thereand of bringing the saga of the schlemiel up-to-date. In
considering sentences written so long ago and in what now seems
entirely "another country," I was surprised to discover how many of
them still please me, how many of them fasten around a topic I
continue to regard as important. That I chose to concentrate my
discussion of the schlemiel in American Jewish literature on the works
of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, and Saul Bellow made
sense at the time, and their subsequent careers have confirmed my
hunches. In other cases, what I now see as ''omissionsPhilip Roth,
Woody Allenfall neatly into that part of me that insists on "more
schlemiels!"
When I was working on the original version of this book, American
Jewish literature was neither as established nor as respectable as it is
now. And while it is true that there were senior professors who
encouraged my pursuit of a comic figure that they much enjoyed,
there were others who asked me privately and in whispers if a writer
with the unlikely name of Mendele the Bookseller actually existed.
For a graduate student to invent such a writer might be daringeven
funny, in a waybut it