SOURCE: "Post-alienation: Recent Directions in Jewish-American Literature," in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 34, No. 3, Fall, 1993, pp. 571-91.

In the following essay, Kremer appraises the work of contemporary Jewish-American authors, citing a revitalized interest in such previously underrepresented subjects as the Holocaust, the Israeli state, and Jewish history and literature.

The years since World War II have been good for Jewish-American writers. During recent decades they have joined the mainstream of American fiction. Their works, reviewed regularly and often lauded in the critical press, are popular with the reading public and are incorporated into university curricula. Yet some critics have been anticipating the end of the Jewish-American novel. Irving Howe claimed in 1977 that "Jewish fiction has probably moved past its highpoint," insofar as it is dependent on the immigrant experience. Leslie Fiedler asserted in 1986 that Jewish-American literature's dominant themes of marginality, alienation, and victimization, which had become associated in Western literature...