Our Decentralized Literature: Cultural Mediations in Selected Jewish and Southern Writers - Softcover

Chametzky, Jules

9780870235405: Our Decentralized Literature: Cultural Mediations in Selected Jewish and Southern Writers

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0870235400 ISBN 13: 9780870235405

Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986

How have American writers functioned as cultural mediators―as agents who bring together the fragments of a diverse society and as artists who invent their culture for new audiences? In particular, how have Jewish and Southern writers fulfilled this role as they strove to move from positions of marginality toward the center of American literary culture and to gain access to the institutions of cultural dominance? These are some of the questions addressed in this stimulating collection of essays.

Jules Chametzky examines the work of Abraham Cahan, Charles Chestnutt, Kate Chopin, I.B. Singer, Edward Dahlberg, Elmer Rice, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Mark Twain, George Washington Cable, Thomas Wolfe, and William Styron, among others. He raises three basic and interrelated issues: first, the question of language; second, ethnic and regional particularities as crucial aspects of twentieth-century American culture; third, the role and strategy of the 'marginal' writer as he or she struggles with these elements within the wider social context. In the process, Chametzky deftly explores the ways in which each writer transforms his or her experiences to create a new sense of being "on native ground."

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About the Author:

Author of From the Ghetto: The Fiction of Abraham Cahan and co-editor of Black and White in American Culture, Jules Chametzky is professor of English and director of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Review:

"A superb book, the rich harvest of brilliant career of mediation, scholarship, and criticism of 'ethnic' literature and culture, by one of the best minds in American Studies. I believe the book will have a broad and lasting impact on the entire field."―Sacvan Bercovitch

"Chametzky works confidently in that region where culture and literature, history, and the imagination interest and has mastered an impressive range of historical facts and social currents without ever losing sight of their imaginative mythic dimensions. At his best, Chametzky demonstrates a master's grasp of his chosen terrain. He also―and this is no small matter―writes, a claim, reasoned, and lucid prose."―Mark Shechner

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