SOURCE: "American-Jewish Literature After Bellow, Malamud, and Roth," in Jewish Book Annual, Vol. 45, 1987-1988, pp. 5-18.

In the following essay, Kahn describes writers of the American Jewish Literary Renaissance who wrote in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

If there was, indeed, an American-Jewish literary Renaissance it probably commenced in the mid-fifties and extended for some fifteen to twenty years into the late sixties or early seventies. Since then Jewish literature has enjoyed a diminished critical vogue and its popularity has also lessened considerably.

The Renaissance so-called is intertwined with the names of Bellow, Malamud and Philip Roth. Edward Lewis Wallant might have offered them keen competition had his life not been cut short at thirty-six. Other writers of lesser stature clearly benefited from the succes d'estime of their more illustrious brethren. Men like Herman Wouk, Irwin Shaw, Leon Uris and Jerome Weidman, previously considered literary entertainers, now received...