Young lions
Subtitle: how Jewish authors reinvented the American war novel
By: Leah Garrett
Series: Cultural expressions of World War II; Cultural expressions of World War II
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 275
ISBN-13: 9780810131446; 9780810131750
Subjects: Jewish authors; World War, 1939-1945; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature; History and criticism; American literature; Literature and the war
Description: "Young Lions: How Jewish Authors Reinvented the American War Novel shows how Jews, traditionally castigated as weak and cowardly, for the first time became the popular literary representatives of what it meant to be a soldier and what it meant to be an American. Revisiting best-selling works ranging from Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead to Joseph Heller's Catch-22, and uncovering a range of unknown archival material, Leah Garrett shows how Jewish writers used the theme of World War II to reshape the American public's ideas about war, the Holocaust, and the role of Jews in postwar life. In contrast to most previous war fiction these new Jewish war novels were often ironic, funny, and irreverent and sought to teach the reading public broader lessons about liberalism, masculinity, and pluralism"--Page 4 of cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-270) and index.
Table of contents: title: The Jewish soldier and literary and historical precedents --; title: 1948 and the Pacific theater : The naked and the dead and An act of love --; title: 1948 and the Holocaust : The young lions, That winter, The crusaders, and Point of no return --; title: 1952 and the new conservatism : The Caine mutiny and Battle cry --; title: 1961 and the new liberalism : Catch-22.