Casting a shadow backwards and forwards: the para-Holocaust fiction of Charles Rezniko", Isaac Bashevis Singer and Bernard Malamud
Casting a shadow backwards and forwards: the para-Holocaust fiction of Charles Rezniko", Isaac Bashevis Singer and Bernard Malamud

Summary/Abstract: The article reconsiders critical reception of three historical novels by Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Charles Rezniko , so as to take issue with Alvin H. Rosenfeld’s assertion that “all novels about Jewish suffering written in the post-Holocaust period must implicate the Holocaust, whether it is expressly named or not” as it “casts its shadow backwards as well as forwards” (A Double Dying, 1980: 68). Interestingly, Rosenfeld, while pointing to Singer’s and Malamud’s alleged inability to face the subject matter of the Holocaust directly, does not even attempt to speculate on possible explanations for their alleged artistic impuissance (if it can be called impuissance at all). What is more, in his deliberations he disregards Rezniko ’s prose completely, and that is why the present paper briefy analyzes the Lionhearted, a tale referring to the persecution of the Jews of York in England in the 12th century, to establish whether it is justifed to regard it as a double discourse, and, arguably, a preliminary for “direct” writing about the Holocaust. All the analyses draw on two major heuristic models of evaluating cultural responses to the Holocaust – the exceptionalist and the constructivist – as put forward and theorized by Alan Mintz.The article reconsiders critical reception of three historical novels by Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Charles Rezniko , so as to take issue with Alvin H. Rosenfeld’s assertion that “all novels about Jewish suffering written in the post-Holocaust period must implicate the Holocaust, whether it is expressly named or not” as it “casts its shadow backwards as well as forwards” (A Double Dying, 1980: 68). Interestingly, Rosenfeld, while pointing to Singer’s and Malamud’s alleged inability to face the subject matter of the Holocaust directly, does not even attempt to speculate on possible explanations for their alleged artistic impuissance (if it can be called impuissance at all). What is more, in his deliberations he disregards Rezniko ’s prose completely, and that is why the present paper briefly analyzes the Lionhearted, a tale referring to the persecution of the Jews of York in England in the 12th century, to establish whether it is justified to regard it as a double discourse, and, arguably, a preliminary for “direct” writing about the Holocaust. All the analyses draw on two major heuristic models of evaluating cultural responses to the Holocaust – the exceptionalist and the constructivist – as put forward and theorized by Alan Mintz.

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