![]() ![]() Potok, like many of his protagonists, embraced both modernity and traditional Judaism. Potok, derided by critics and scholars for his popular success, famously wrote about the tensions of American Jewish life from, as Walden writes in his introduction, “from the inside, inclusively” (xi). The latest turns both in scholarship as well as fiction writing should further prove Walden’s prescience. ![]() Long a critical champion of Potok’s fiction in an academic milieu that tends to privilege secular rebellions over traditional commitments, Walden–likewise a world-class writer and scholar–insisted on re-casting American Jewish creative culture so that the concerns explored by Potok would no longer occupy the margins of American Jewish literary criticism. Daniel Walden’s last book, published only a few months before his passing in November 2013, should be read as a moving tribute not only to Chaim Potok, whom Walden calls a “world-class writer and scholar,” but to Walden himself. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |