Can Hasidim save American Jewish Literature?
Word from: David
A big factor in the decline of American Jewish Literature is the sterile and secure (financially, if not emotionally) life that most Jews life. Driving to work, occasionally to synagogue or an exclusive community center, playing videogames, in the basement or basketball in the driveway just doesn't seem to make for a compelling and cohesive narrative. No MFA can compensate for years of isolation and self-absorption.
Thank God for Hasidim, the last untapped resource. Think of all the drama in a place like Williamsburg, Brooklyn: street fights, simcha dancing, arranged marriages, kugel and holishkes, the L train, landlords, Holocaust survivors living in housing projects, rats, secret card games in the Beit Midrash at night, dynastic marriages, Yiddish graffiti, eating cholent a block from the Marcy Projects, traffic in jewelry. These are all things I have seen in brief visits there. And lest one romanticize this community; the step of becoming an author for a wider audience really woud be rebellious, challenging, noteworthy.
I can not write about Williamsburg due to my near pathological hate (mixed with jealousy) towards a certain community. They are considered insular, oddly clothed, self-righteous and generally unproductive, supported by their parents. They are known as hipsters. A murder mystery, perhaps?
6 Comments:
At 9:51 AM, Jake said…
I think the lit is usually "saved" by the marginalized elements - like fifty yrs ago many of the biggest American comedians were graduates of the borscht belt, and then the ghetto youths, etc. Satmars are marginalized among the rest of the Jews, though not quite in the same way. I think there's a couple of major Russian Jewish writers in the queue and that we should be expecting a brilliant circle of Ethiopian poets any day now. Who else is classically marginalized in the same way? Gay Jews in the traditional circles? There's got to be a few more groups we could think of.
I def agree regarding the hipsters - no promise of genius from that corner. Things are a little too comfortable there. But, must say, it makes me happy to be on L-train with all of the fun looking peeps.
At 5:27 PM, David said…
Well, these day's who doesn't feel marginalized? It's such an integral part of being on the right side of h. I think it could from anywhere, but what first comes to mind besides Hasidim are children of Habad Shluchim, Ba'alei Teshuva, insiders (Rabbi's children, Rabbinical Students), and it clearly doesn't have to just someone with Orthodox roots.
As I wrote to a friend...
Most Hasidim might be indifferent or hostile, but hopefully there is one person who still believes in literature, remixing all the questions of the Haskalah that have been buried in Yiddish books. Although he probably would just pimp his ethnicity and culture as a gimmick for the -- of the world. It doesn't have to be a guy from Williamsburg; it could be someone from Crown Heights, Monsey, a Russian or Georgian Israeli in Brooklyn. Or more likely Waterbury, Pittsburgh, Rochester, a suburb of LA, or Boston; sometimes small places have more of a cohesive, open intellectual life then big cities.
Come to think of it, it will probably be a woman. The trouble with writing is that most people (myself included) are obsessed with their personal space and its subjectivity; they can't create charachters. I also think most good narratives are city based or traditional in nature; there has to be a place where people meet. A college campus, a bar mitzvah, a classroom, something.
At 8:35 AM, denaweiss said…
This whole discussion makes me think back to good old Rilke's "letters to a young poet." (I'm not embarassed to be reading this book. Again. And to have heard about it from Sister Act 2.)
"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it, blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty, no poor, indifferent place."
A really great writer could make the nutrition information on the side of a cereal box fascinating and a bad writer could make hasidim, boring. Trust me, I have read books about hasidim that are bad. And the fact that they are using "good material" to mask poor writing only seems to make the writing worse.
At 7:30 AM, David said…
I certainly agree that an interesting setting is subjective and that being in one doesn't automatically make for good writing. There are plenty of events that inspire art that I'd never want to see again: war, natural disasters, intense Anti-Semitism...
At 7:26 PM, Sholom said…
You want some good American Jewish literature in the making? Don't click here or here.
At 1:36 AM, Virtual Rabbi said…
Oh! Oh! Let me become marginalized, too. so I can be truly hip, not the the fake hip, no, really hip, undiscovered hip, integral hip, hip-to-be-Skwere hip, Kosher Delight hip, Andre Codrescu hip, rootless, bootless and street-cred hip. Wipe my lip after bulemia throw-up on my shoes hip. But no, I have to be stuck out here in the upper middle class suburbs hip, old fat married guy with lots of kids hip, dissed by the young pipsqueaks who don't know what to make of him hip. Roll over disaffected Gay Jewish youth, tell the Ethiopians to move.
Ben said...
Post a Comment
<< Home