A measure of memory
Subtitle: storytelling and identity in American Jewish fiction
By: Victoria Aarons.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 218
Subjects: American fiction -- Jewish authors -- History and criticism; Judaism and literature -- United States -- History; Jews -- United States -- Intellectual life; Jews -- United States -- Identity; Storytelling -- United States; Group identity in literature; Memory in literature; Jews in literature
Description: A Measure of Memory explores the importance of storytelling in articulating the vicissitudes of individual and communal identity in twentieth-century American Jewish fiction. Focusing primarily on the short story and on major figures such as Sholom Aleichem, Delmore Schwartz, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, J. D.

Salinger, and Art Spiegelman, Victoria Aarons examines the characteristically self-reflexive narratives of Jewish literature, ranging from Hebrew scripture, the Jewish Enlightenment, and Yiddish literature to the postmodernism of Grace Paley and the feminism of Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Francine Prose, and Leslea Newman. Aarons demonstrates how, in telling their personal histories, characters in American Jewish fiction bear witness to the survival - if only in memory - of a community.

Their stories speak to a shared defeat and achievement and thus to a shared but evolving cultural ethos.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.