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PAGE 18 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE February 18,
Views and /-* . -
reviews /Coming of age
by Joseph Cohen
Probably the two most widely
heralded literary movements in
20th-century America have been
the so-called Southern Renaissance,
begun by the “Fugitives” at
Vanderbilt University, crowned by
Faulkner, and carried forward
today by Eudora Welty and
Walker Percy; and the American
Jewish Renaissance, marked by
the prestigious achievements of
Bellow, Malamud, Roth, Heller,
Singer, Mailer, Ozick and others
These two movements, one would
8 have thought, might have touched
one another somewhere along the
way, producing for mainstream
literary Amenca a tradition of
Southem-Jewish writing. No such
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tradition exists. Most of us would
be hard put to name three or four
Southern-Jewish novelists or the
titles of their works. Margaret
Mitchella, bubeleh, where are you
hiding’’
Despite the absence of a strong
Southern-Jewish literary
tradition, a number of novels have,
in fact, been written. In his recently
published, outstanding compilation
“A Guide to Jewish Themes in
American Fiction 1940-1980,”
Murray Blackman lists upward of
40 titles about Southern Jews that
have appeared in the last four
decades. Written by both Jews and
non-Jews, they have had no
collective impact whatsoever.
Most were by unknowns, though a
few have been penned by writers
with well-established reputations,
including Sholem Asch(“A Passage
in the Night”), Gerald Green (“The
Lotus Eaters”), Irving Shulman
(“Saturn’s Child”), Tom Lea
(“Wonderful Country”), and
William Styron (“Lie Down in
Darkness”). None of these were
Southern Jews writing out of that
experience, and several only touch
peripherally on Southern-Jewish
life.
Perhaps the best known novels
by Southern Jews are Paige
Mitchell's “The Covenant” and
Ronald L. Bern’s “The Legacy.”
“Paige Mitchell” is the pen name
used by Judy Segal, who was bom
and reared in New Orleans, while
Bern is from Anderson, S.C.
Another reasonably well-known
novel is Richard Kluger’s
“Member of the Tribe,” based on
the Leo Frank case. Kluger came
from New Jersey. Novels about
Southern Jews are set in Virginia,
North and South Carolina,
Florida, Georgia, Mississippi,
Louisiana and Texas. None in
Tennessee or Alabama.
li) the case of Alabama, its
vacuum is being addressed this
month, with the publication,
surprisingly, of two novels: Roy
Hoffman’s “Almost Family" (Dial
Press, $14.95), set in Mobile, and
Susan Monsky’s “Midnight
Suppers” (Houghton Mifflin,
$13.95), set in Montgomery.
Along with the coincidental
publication of the two books
within 10 days of each other, they
are phenomenally similar. Both
are first novels by young.
Alabama-reared Jews, two years
apart in age. The only major
discernible difference between
them, apart from sex, is that
Hoffman graduated from Tulane
while Monsky got her degree from
Brandeis. Even the dark blue
bindings, and gold stamping, as
well as the dimensions of the
books, are practically identical.
Both are stories about liberally
inclined, restless, shrewd, tough
Reform Jewish princess-type
heroines, whose mature lives are
played out against the backdrop of
Southern history from the end of
World War II, through the Civil
down in Dixie
Rights crisis, up to the present. In
both books, the Hummingbird, the
Crescent and the Greyhound bus
ply their runs, Jewish busy-bodies
meddle, grandparents reminisce
about their old-world lives,
clothing stores open and close,
dime-store sit-ins are interspersed
with the foreboding movements of
the Klan, automobile accidents
claim lives, and the smouldering
ambivalences of Christian
fundamentalists, torn between
despising their Jewish neighbors as
“Christ killers” and loving them as
God’s “Chosen People," invade and
modify the lives of the Jewish
protagonists, while the sun beats
down relentlessly on friend and foe
alike.
Both protagonists, Vivian Gold
in “Almost Family” and Esther
Berenson in “Midnight Suppers,”
use confusion as a means of
manipulating others to get their
way. Keenly alive, they participate
to the fullest in their own lives and
the lives of their loved ones,
selfishly motivated but enormously
appealing. Each directs the lives of
her menfolk and her children as a
self-appointed choreographer of
the dance of life. The tune they
dance to metaphorically is “Stars
Fell on Alabama.” Indeed, both
use dancing as a means of total
expression when they want to
break out symbolically from the
routinized postures they have
imposed on themselves. Their
husbands adore them, take back
seats complacently, are successful,
Gold as a realtor, Berenson as a
pediatrician; and everybody eats a
lot of fried chicken and potato
salad. Also crab6 and shrimp.
Club life: the Gentile Old Dixie
in Madoc (for Mobile) with its
Jewish quota—the Golds made the
cut—and the Progressive (all
Jewish) in Montgomery, are each
essential and each provides the
setting for significant human
interaction. AKone point in their
lives, both women miscarry. They
each have children whom they fret
over, and whose school essays (dhe
in the form of a letter) get reprinted
in full in the novels. Both fight with
their daughters as the latter grow
up and go off to Boston. These
daughters both inherit their
mothers’ contrasting vulnerability
and toughness. In both
households, there is the “other
mother,” the faithful black
domestic, keeping one eye shut to
the family’s foibles, and one eye
open to protect them against harm.
If so much is similar, then what
is different? The stories are unlike
one another, though the people are
practically interchangefble.
Hoffman’s “Almost Family” is
autobiographical, concerned
primarily with Vivian Gold’s 25-
year-long relationship with her black
housekeeper, Nebraska Waters,
and the efforts, futile in the end,
each makes to overcome the social,
economic and political obstacles
between them. Monsky’s
“Midnight Suppers” is about an
understood, but purposely
unarticulated menage, consisting
of two pediatricians who are
partners, and the one wife they
discreetly shared between them.
Oy vey, such goings on, who would
believe! Nearly everybody, these
days, I suspect.
Though Hoffman has a much
better ear than Mohsky for both
Jewish and black vocal patterns,
both authors are acutely sensitive
to the nuances of communication
that go on constantly between
people intimately associated with
one another. Yet for all the
ramified aspects of Southem-
Jewish life encompassed in both
books, there is still something vital
obscured. Somehow, the
internalized richness of the
specifically Jewish experience is
not captured by either writer.
Their attitudes and postures,
influenced, no doubt, by the
apprehensiveness of growing up
“different" during unsettled times,
are too defensive, excluding the
satisfaction of owning a special,
unique heritage interjacent to a
larger exotic one, like an exquisite
emerald hidden at the base of a
magnolia blossom. On the other
hand, the authors make it clear
that the emerald is there. If, by
virtue of their youth, they
presently demonstrate in this
respect more promise than
achievement, we still have every
reason to applaud and encourage
them on their way, to say nothing
of enjoying their charming books.
Copyright 1983 Joseph Cohen
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