Description
Book SynopsisEfforts to describe contemporary Jewish American identities often reveal more questions than concrete articulations, more statements about what Jewish Americans are not than what they are. Highlighting the paradoxical phrasings that surface in contemporary writings about Jewish American literature and culturelanguage that speaks to the elusive difference felt by many Jewish AmericansAaron Tillman asks how we portray identities and differences that seem to resist concrete definition. Over the course of Magical American Jew, Tillman examines this enigmathe indefinite yet undeniable difference that informs contemporary Jewish American identitydemonstrating how certain writers and filmmakers have deployed magical realist techniques to illustrate the enigmatic difference that Jewish Americans have felt and continue to feel. Similar to the indeterminate nature of Jewish American identity, magical realism is marked by paradox and does not fit easily into any singular category. Often character
Table of ContentsIntroduction Magical American Jew: The Enigma of Difference in Contemporary Jewish American Short Fiction and Film Chapter 1 Postmodern Neurotic: Jewish American Excess and the Narrative Body in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall Chapter 2 Presuming the Dominant Gaze: Spirits of Shame in Cynthia Ozick’s “Levitation” Chapter 3 Collecting Pain: Masochism, Identity, and Archiving Trauma Testimony in Melvin Jules Bukiet’s “The Library of Moloch” Chapter 4 “‘Jewish, Here in the Back’: Magical and Comical Discord between Religiosity and Ethnicity in Nathan Englander’s ‘The Gilgul of Park Avenue’ and Steve Stern’s ‘The Tale of a Kite’” Chapter 5 “Through the Rube Goldberg Crazy Straw”: Ethnic Mobility and Narcissistic Fantasy in Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic Conclusion Portraying the Impossible: Franz Kafka and the Magical Influence of an Enigmatic Artist
