Jewish gangsters of modern literature

Resource Information

The work Jewish gangsters of modern literature represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Cleveland Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Jewish gangsters of modern literature

Statement of responsibility

Rachel Rubin

Creator

• Rubin, Rachel, 1964-

Subject

• Jews -- United States -- Intellectual life
• Gangsters in literature
• American fiction -- Jewish authors | History and criticism
• Judaism and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Fuchs, Daniel, 1909-1993 -- Characters | Jewish criminals
• Jews in literature
• American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
• Jewish criminals in literature
• Ornitz, Samuel, 1890-1957
• Babelʹ, I., (Isaak), 1894-1940 -- Characters | Jewish criminals
• Gold, Michael, 1893-1967

Language

eng

Summary

• "In this study, Rachel Rubin posits the Jewish literary gangster as a locus for exploring questions of artistic power in the interwar years. Focusing specifically on the Russian writer Isaac Babel and Americans Mike Gold, Samuel Ornitz, and Daniel Fuchs, but also taking in cartoons, movies, and modernist paintings, Rubin casts the Jewish gangster as a favorite figure used by left-wing Jewish writers to examine their own place in world history."
• "Rubin contends that these writers saw their artistic endeavors as akin to the work of their gangster doubles: outcasts and rebels "kneebreaking" their way into the literary canon while continuing to "do business" with the system. In the hands of Jewish literary communists - themselves engaged in transgressing cultural boundaries - the figure of the Jewish gangster provides an occasion to craft a virile Jewish masculinity, to consider the role of vernacular in literature, to interrogate the place of art within a political economy, and to explore the fate of Jewishness in the "new worlds" of the United States and the Soviet Union."--Jacket

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

813/.540935203924

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

PS374.J48

LC item number

R83 2000

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

NLM call number

000098562