Not Your Father's Fiction Guide

By SANFORD PINSKER

AMERICAN JEWISH FICTION
By Josh Lambert
205 pages. The Jewish Publication Society. $18.

For general readers, nothing dooms a volume quicker than the label “reference book.” Why so? Because most reference books, now shorn of the sneer quotes, strike general readers as dryasdust, crashing bores to read. Part of the problem is a matter of style—with many reference books, it seems that a machine, rather than a breathing human being, wrote them—and part is a matter of substance: facts crowd out anything that might have been intrinsically interesting.

Enter Josh Lambert, a lively essayist/book reviewer who is not afraid to shake off independent judgments like a wet puppy just indoors from the rain. You know you’re in good hands when the author of a reference book begins by telling you that if you’ve “picked up this guide then you must already have some sense for what American Jewish fiction is or at least ought to be.” So, Lambert (rightly) dispenses with a definition of American Jewish fiction, along with the quibbles that such a “definition” usually generates, and, instead, moves to short sections on historical context and fundamental themes. No doubt there are those who would quibble with Lambert’s thumbnail sketches of standbys such as immigration and assimilation, politics and religion, Zionism and the Holocaust; and even more who will wonder why this or that novel is excluded. Lambert tries—gently, patiently—to explain why he made certain editorial judgments:

... novels with nothing to say about the United States—even if they were written by American Jews—have been mostly left out. No guide could cover every piece of American fiction that happens to have been written by a Jew, so this one focuses on those that related directly or indirectly to the experiences of Jews in America.

Lambert’s survey runs from Nathan Mayer’s Differences (1867) to Anya Ulinich’s Petropolis (2007), with dozens of novels in between. The result is a reader-friendly guide, one that makes it easy to get a sense of the book’s plot, Lambert’s sense of its importance and where to go for further reading.

Given Lambert’s commonsensical reasons for excluding wide swathes of books with Jewish authors, but with no discernable Jewish content, it is not easy to think about titles that he, for one reason or another, omitted. I mention this because some reviewers will feel an obligation to be professional scolds, and to hang out a laundry list of novels that didn’t make Mr. Lambert’s cut. I will save this particular “profession obligation” for another day when I meet up with a reference book that deserves it.

I hope Lambert will appreciate my last paragraph because his prose suggests that he is an unpretentious guy. Here is what he says, after quoting the opening salvo of Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March (1953): Bellow’s Personal Declaration of Independence meant “independence from literary technique, from propriety, from tidy prose.” And here is what he says about Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock (l993):

Philip Roth’s rebellious spirit, extraordinary self-confidence, and prodigious talents as a novelist position him perfectly to produce books that turn the concept of fiction on its ear. In The Ghostwriter (l979), The Counterlife (l986), The Facts (l988), and The Plot Against America(2004), Roth does exactly that, calling into question the conventions of his own writing and joyfully subverting his readers’ unexamined expectations.

In short, Roth owned the l990s, period. When he was good, he was very, very good; and, later, when he was bad (e.g., Exit Ghost), he was very bad indeed. And while Lambert doesn’t mention Exit Ghost (even in passing), I suspect he would agree with my assessment.

The usual truth is that reference books belong in libraries, but Josh Lambert’s American Jewish Fiction is a notable exception. American readers—those Jewish, those not—should buy it and flip through the pages when looking for a good novel to buy on Amazon.com or to pick up from the public library. Jewish book clubs are yet another group that would greatly benefit from Lambert’s wide-ranging survey.

Finally: want to know which books have won the National Jewish Book Award, presented since l949, or the Edward Lewis Wallant Award (presented since l963)? Lambert tells you. He also adds appendixes, each a few paragraphs long, on such subjects as “Jewish Characters in Modern American Fiction” (e.g. Robert Cohn in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises), “untranslated Yiddish and Hebrew Novels About America,” bibliographic resources, and anthologies.

America Jewish Fiction does everything it set out to do, and in the process, accomplishes a great deal more.