T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

prominence in movies, in the theatre and in literature. Thetruth and the traumas of the immigrant's experience promptedthe Jews In the Jnlted States to respond in many ways to thepressures of the New World. Some quickly or eventuallyassimilated. Some attempted to flnd a middle-way by which theycould become Americans and still retain their sense of beingJews. Others were so alienated as to drop out and pass into thegreat other world-the world of the gentiles. Since the 1940s,Jewish wrlters llke Bellow, Mailer, Salinqer, Malamud, Miller,Frledman, Roth, Heller, Ozlck, Rosen, Schwartz, Trilling,Potok, Slnqer and Wlesel responded as no other group to thecountry's urgent cultural need. Slnger wrote In Yiddish, WieselIn French and Mailer, Sallnger and Trilling dealt onlyperipherally *-ti Jews. But Bellow, Malamud, Roth and theothers are In every sense American-Jewlsh writers because theirnoveis and storles reflect their concerns. More than any otherJew~s? .writer , it was Bernard Malamud who gave the requireddirection and thrust to propel the Jewish-American writer tothe centre staqe of Arnerlcan llterary wrlting. Withoutinsisting on tne ;ewls essential difference from the societythey desxred to join, Malamud struck a healthy balance betweenaloofness and assimilation - whlch America accepted andacknowledged sincerely.Desplte thelr rndivldual differences they usually dealt