The Jewish American short story, 1950–1980

One of the most persistent functions of the American short story from the last decades of the nineteenth century has been to act as a kind of advance guard for new voices, particularly for new immigrant or older ‘marginalized’ sections of American society. Newness and marginality are no longer the appropriate words for any of the different American ethnic groups, but the short story still plays a significant role in giving them cognizance of each other, intimate glimpses into the very feeling and texture of life in different communities. One can hardly any longer talk of a ‘mainstream’, or if one can, it is no longer homogeneous: rather there is a sense of many different groups contributing to a kind of literary centre ground governed by the major writers from all groups, and the major short story magazines and publishing houses. No self-respecting writer would want to be mainly regarded in terms of ethnic or regional identity, but there is still a strong sense in many writers of allegiance to this. American Jewish writers of this period, like Isaac Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, and Tillie Olsen (confining ourselves once again to writers who have made a significant contribution to the short story), have, to greater or lesser degrees, written about Jewish communities and issues. Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote in Yiddish and drew a great deal on traditional European Jewish culture and folk story traditions.