Jean's Honors Thesis

Abramson, Edward A. “Bernard Malamud and the Jews: An Ambiguous Relationship.”

The Yearbook of English Studies. Vol. 24, Ethnicity and Representation in

American Literature, 1994. 146-156. Modern Humanities Research Association

Web 19 Oct 10 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3507887>.

The article’s thesis:

My contention is the Bernard Malamud is not only far from being an author concerned with the plight of one small grouping of humanity, but that when he treats Jewish matters, most often he universalizes Jews, Jewish culture, history, and Judaism to such an extent as to render them no more than bases from which to explore the human condition.

Alter, Iska. “The Natural, The Assistant, and American Materialism.” The Good

Man’s Dilemma: Social Criticism in the Fiction of Bernard Malamud New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1981. 1-26. Rpt. In Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 129. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web 19 Oct 10 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1420047439&v=2.1&u=cuny_ccny&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w>.

The thesis:

To embody his concerns as a Jew, an artist, and a moral man, Malamud has evolved a style that is uniquely his. Its fusion of the fabulous and the factual, called “lyrical realism” by the Yiddish critic Mayer Shticker, is the fictive analogue to the Chasidic belief that the mystical connection to God is to be found not in ascetic isolation, but through man’s participation in the ordinary activities and mundane events of daily existence.

Spevack, Edmund. “Racial Conflict and Multiculturalism: Bernard Malamud’s The

Tenants.” MELUS. Vol. 22, No. 3, Varieties of Ethnic Criticism (Autumn, 1997),

pp. 31-54. 26 Sept 10 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/467653>.

The problem of this article is stated in multiple questions:

One main goal of this essay will be to examine whether Malamud adheres to a belief in a clearly delineated formal and thematic mainstream at the beginning of the 1970s, or whether he ventures to depart from traditional mainstream attitudes towards non-Western peoples and their forms of literary expression. Another key problem arises directly from this fundamental issue: may Malamud’s novel (with its theme of racial antagonism in the United States, as well as its reflection on the varieties of literary forms of expression) be seen as anticipating the multiculturalism and canon debates of the 1980s and 1990s? Should Malamud’s work thus be seen merely as problematic (commenting on the current state of affairs in 1971) or perhaps also as somewhat prophetic (attempting a prognosis, whatever its accuracy, of future developments)?

Shear, Walter. “Culture Conflict in ‘The Assistant’.” The Midwest Quarterly. 7.4

(Summer 1966): 367-380. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. James P. Draper and Jennifer Allison Brostrom. Vol. 78. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994. Literature Resource Center. Gale. CUNY – City College of New York. 20 Oct. 2010 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=cuny_ccny>.

The thesis:

In The Assistant two cultures, the Jewish tradition and the American heritage (representing the wisdom of the old world and the practical knowledge of the new), collide and to some degree synthesize to provide a texture of social documentation which is manifested in a realistic aesthetic. However, the dichotomy is preserved and in fact given emphasis through an entirely different aesthetic presentation, one which tends to project the characters as types and treats their motivations, environments, and ideas as symbolic threads which link the narrative to the deeper level of personal significance from which the elements of human strength and weakness manage to emerge in the actions which both define and dramatize culture as a phenomenon.

Stanley, Sandra Kumamoto. “Mourning the ‘greatest generation’: myth and history

in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral.” Twentieth Century Literature. (Vol. 51). .1 (Spring 2005): p1. Literature Resource Center. Gale. CUNY – City College of New York. 20 Oct. 2010 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=cuny_ccny>.

The thesis of this article can be summarized in this quote: “I would argue that in American Pastoral, Roth, in the guise of his alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, returns to a consideration of the sixties, but with a less satirical, more elegiac voice.”

Tuerk, Richard. “Jews Without Money as a Work of Art.” Studies in American

Jewish Literature. 7.1 (Spring 1988): 67-79. Rpt. in Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, Literature Resource Center. Gale. CUNY – City College of New York. 20 Oct. 2010 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=cuny_ccny>.

The thesis:

Jews Without Money may be “simple.” Still, it is more than a series of vivid, episodic, factual but roughhewn sketches of East Side life with a radical ending. It is, in fact, the end product of much revision, and it often comes closer to fiction than fact.