{"id":2849,"date":"2015-03-18T07:05:20","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T12:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=2849"},"modified":"2015-03-18T07:05:20","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T12:05:20","slug":"schlemiel-theory-on-cynthia-ozicks-denunciation-of-henry-bech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2015\/03\/18\/schlemiel-theory-on-cynthia-ozicks-denunciation-of-henry-bech\/","title":{"rendered":"Schlemiel Theory: On Cynthia Ozick’s Denunciation of Henry Bech"},"content":{"rendered":"

They say there’s a blog about everything, and yesterday at The Home of Schlemiel Theory<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>a writer going by the user name mfeuer2012 published a piece “On Cynthia Ozick’s Denunciation of Henry Bech: John Updike’s Literary Portrayal of the Jew as Schlemiel,”<\/a> the title of which may go a long ways toward explaining.<\/p>\n

\"images-3\"<\/a>Ozick called Bech “theologically hollow” and according to the author “her reasons for choosing such a term and making such a trenchant criticism of Updike’s attempt to represent a Jew are noteworthy. They give us a sense of how Ozick\u2014and others\u2014might criticize many of the schlemiels we see in literature and film today. It also gives us a glimpse of her criterion for what makes for a plausible Jewish character in Jewish American fiction.”<\/p>\n

Citing other novels as well, the author writes, “Ozick’s gloss on these ‘de-Judaicized Jewish novelists’ foreshadows her rant on what is missing not just in Bech but in most Jewish writing today: knowledge of Jewish history. But this omission is not done out of neglect so much as what Ozick calls ‘autolobotomy.’ Wondering at this caricature of the Jew, Ozick suggests we think about how this would sound if this kind of portrayal were done with respect to real African-Americans.”<\/p>\n

Later: “Updike, argues Ozick, loves Bech most when he is ‘thoroughly de-Beched’\u2014when ‘Bech is most openly, most shrewdly, most strategically, most lyrically Updike’ (119). And this happens when the ‘Appropriate Reference Machine’ (ARM from here on) breaks down. At these moments of failure, Updike the theologian takes over.<\/p>\n

“And in these moments, when the ARM breaks, there is a brief exposure to a Christeological kind of epiphany. However, this doesn’t transform Beck. Rather he returns to a kind of state that is . . . comical.”<\/p>\n

Read the entire article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They say there’s a blog about everything, and yesterday at The Home of Schlemiel Theory\u00a0a writer going by the user name mfeuer2012 published a piece “On Cynthia Ozick’s Denunciation of Henry Bech: John Updike’s Literary Portrayal of the Jew as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scholarship-analysis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2851,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849\/revisions\/2851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}