Description
Book SynopsisExplores the polit (“fugitive”), a literary type - an “unheroic hero” - who is rather like the picaro (“rogue”) from whom the Picaresque genre takes its name. Focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on Yiddish literature, Udel puts that literature into productive conversation with European and American texts, as well as critical and theoretical sources.
Trade ReviewAn intellectually mature, subtle work that illuminates with the use of a vast array of primary and interpretive literature so many crucial moments in the shaping of modern Yiddish, Hebrew, German and American- Jewish letters. Udel is a literary scholar with a sureness of touch and consummate scholarly command.” —Steven J. Zipperstein, Stanford University
“Never Better! is just that: a theoretically exciting study of the way in which Jewish writers translated and adapted a familiar European genre to create a distinctly modernist poetics of the picaresque.” —Justin Cammy, Smith College
