Young Lions: How Jewish Authors Reinvented the American War Novel shows how Jews, traditionally castigated as weak and cowardly, for the first time became the popular literary representatives of what it meant to be a soldier and what it meant to be an American. Revisiting best-selling works ranging from Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, and uncovering a range of unknown archival material, Leah Garrett shows how Jewish writers used the theme of World War II to reshape the American public’s ideas about war, the Holocaust, and the role of Jews in postwar life. In contrast to most previous war fiction these new “Jewish” war novels were often ironic, funny, and irreverent and sought to teach the reading public broader lessons about liberalism, masculinity, and pluralism.
| ISBN: | 9780810131750 |
| Publication date: | 30th September 2015 |
| Author: | Leah Garrett |
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 260 pages |
| Series: | Cultural Expressions of World War II |
| Genres: |
Second World War Modern warfare Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers Social groups: religious groups and communities |