Jewish gangsters of modern literature
By: Rachel Rubin.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Urbana
Language: eng
Number of pages: 189
Subjects: Babelʹ, I. 1894-1941 -- Characters -- Jewish criminals; Ornitz, Samuel, 1890-1957; Fuchs, Daniel, 1909- -- Characters -- Jewish criminals; Gold, Michael, 1894-1967; American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Judaism and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Jewish criminals in literature; American fiction -- Jewish authors -- History and criticism; Jews -- United States -- Intellectual life; Gangsters in literature; Jews in literature
Description: "In this study, Rachel Rubin posits the Jewish literary gangster as a locus for exploring questions of artistic power in the interwar years. Focusing specifically on the Russian writer Isaac Babel and Americans Mike Gold, Samuel Ornitz, and Daniel Fuchs, but also taking in cartoons, movies, and modernist paintings, Rubin casts the Jewish gangster as a favorite figure used by left-wing Jewish writers to examine their own place in world history.".

"Rubin contends that these writers saw their artistic endeavors as akin to the work of their gangster doubles: outcasts and rebels "kneebreaking" their way into the literary canon while continuing to "do business" with the system.

In the hands of Jewish literary communists - themselves engaged in transgressing cultural boundaries - the figure of the Jewish gangster provides an occasion to craft a virile Jewish masculinity, to consider the role of vernacular in literature, to interrogate the place of art within a political economy, and to explore the fate of Jewishness in the "new worlds" of the United States and the Soviet Union."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [167]-181) and index.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgments; title: Note on transliteration; title: Introduction : the dream of his kingdom; title: Imagine you are a tiger : a new folk hero in Babel's Odessa tales; title: Sordid generation : plundering ethnic culture in Samuel Ornitz's Haunch paunch and jowl; title: Gang of little Yids : savage Jews in Mike Gold's Jews without money; title: Business is business : the death of the gangster in Daniel Fuchs's novels of the 1930s; title: Conclusion : the gangster's funeral; title: Notes; title: References cited; title: Index.