Taking a number of bestselling post-WW2 novels as her subject, Leah Garrett explores how Jewish-authored novels remoulded discourses around the war, the Holocaust, and post-war life in the American imaginary.
Beginning with an in-depth survey of the literary precedents to the American war novel, from Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (1895) to Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (1929), Garrett begins her study proper in 1948, with a proliferation of bestselling novels by Jewish authors with Jewish soldiers as protagonists.
Garrett’s book follows the shifting politics of the United States, from the “New Conservatism” of the 1950s to the “New Liberalism” of the 1960s, showing how Jewish writers responded to changing contexts in their exploration of American masculinity, suburbanisation and pluralism.
Although it occasionally paints with broad brushstrokes, especially concerning the supposed "purposes" (both moral and political) of the literature under study, Garrett's work makes a fine contribution to the field, offering fresh readings of canonical texts (such as Heller's Catch-22) and near-forgotten bestsellers alike.
