By
– January 3, 2012
This study of Jewish American drama as it reflects Jewish American experience is the first book on the subject and a brilliant one: comprehensive, insightful, eloquent, and witty — including trenchant analyses of plays by Elmer Rice, Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Joseph Stein, Alfred Uhry, Donald Margulies, Herb Gardner, and Wendy Wasserstein.
For Novick the “great question” these playwrights explore in their work is “how (or whether)” their characters “keep faith with their Jewish heritage, while at the same time embracing (or not embracing) American opportunities, moral, as well as material.”
Especially interesting, in this regard, is his chapter on “Arthur Miller and the Jews,” where Novick discusses the pros and cons of the “Jewishness” of Death of a Salesman, Miller having in recent years “identified the Lomans as Jews — but as Jews who have lost their Jewishness.”
Novick demonstrates well how expressive this drama is not only of the Jewish American experience; but of “the experience of most of us in this famously multiethnic nation of immigrants and their descendents.”
For Novick the “great question” these playwrights explore in their work is “how (or whether)” their characters “keep faith with their Jewish heritage, while at the same time embracing (or not embracing) American opportunities, moral, as well as material.”
Especially interesting, in this regard, is his chapter on “Arthur Miller and the Jews,” where Novick discusses the pros and cons of the “Jewishness” of Death of a Salesman, Miller having in recent years “identified the Lomans as Jews — but as Jews who have lost their Jewishness.”
Novick demonstrates well how expressive this drama is not only of the Jewish American experience; but of “the experience of most of us in this famously multiethnic nation of immigrants and their descendents.”
Norman J. Fedder, Ph.D., is distinguished professor emeritus of theatre at Kansas State University. He is currently on the faculty of the Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Nova Southeastern University.
