A measure of memory

by Victoria Aarons

A Measure of Memory explores the importance of storytelling in articulating the vicissitudes of individual and communal identity in twentieth-century American Jewish fiction. Focusing primarily on the short story and on major figures such as Sholom Aleichem, Delmore Schwartz, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, J. D. Salinger, and Art Spiegelman, Victoria Aarons examines the characteristically self-reflexive narratives of Jewish literature, ranging from Hebrew scripture, the Jewish Enlightenment, and Yiddish literature to the postmodernism of Grace Paley and the feminism of Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Francine Prose, and Leslea Newman. Aarons demonstrates how, in telling their personal histories, characters in American Jewish fiction bear witness to the survival - if only in memory - of a community. Their stories speak to a shared defeat and achievement and thus to a shared but evolving cultural ethos.