Before the Beatniks drew national attention, before Elvis, before a thousand kids who had never met a black person began listening to the blues, before John, Paul, George and Ringo; before Dylan, before hippies, before the 1968 riots in Paris, before punk rock, and before people realized that there was a lot of money to be made off youthful rebellion, there was J.D. Salinger.

Salinger might not be the greatest American fiction writer of the 20^th century, but there is plenty of evidence that says he’s the most important. He may or may not have written the great American novel, he created characters that will live on for decades to come, and he has a hold on artists of all kinds, an allure that both attracts readers and bleeds into contemporary literature.

For all we know, J.D. Salinger didn’t care about this unfaltering legacy, and if he could have gone on living another 200 years, he would probably still be hiding out in his fortress in Cornish, New Hampshire, hoping we’d all just leave him alone.

But since God, nature, or whatever, works in mysterious ways, Salinger is no longer of this Earth, and that is why Kenneth Slawenski’s biography, J.D. Salinger: A Life, is one of the most anticipated biographies of the year.  Salinger is back in the spotlight, but this time he can’t object.

Attempting to piece together the life of a man who dropped out of sight for 40 years –at the height of his popularity and influence—is hardly a task to be envied; yet, it reads like a labor of love, and Slawenski does everything short of spying on Salinger.  His book is part biography, part literary criticism, and succeeds in connecting Salinger’s work to his own life, giving us as good of picture as we may ever get; and makes the picture a bit more clear.

For years, Salinger lived under the impression that both of his parents were Jewish, but he eventually came to find out that his mother was of Irish-Catholic descent. Although this has been a source of controversy and discussion among Salinger aficionados for years, Slawenski notes that as Sol Salinger’s social status advanced, he began to turn his back on his Jewish background.  Similarly, Holden Caulfield’s obsession with all this is “phony,” suggests that perhaps Salinger’s works were filled with veiled autobiographical references.

One of the book’s most interesting stories is about Salinger’s time spent in Austria, right before World War II.  Salinger, living with a Jewish family, falls in love with his host family’s daughter — only to lose her in the chaos that would claim millions in the coming years.  Salinger grieved the loss of his Austrian family, and his first love, and would later attempt to retell that story in “A Girl I knew.”

Slawenski also mentions an unpublished, proto-Inglorious Basterds story about a Frenchman who kidnaps Adolf Hitler.  There was also the writer’s first hand experience with the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, written during his time with a division that helped liberate victims in Dachau.  Salinger never talked much about this time in his life, but the effects on his writing must have been immeasurable.

Telling the tale of Salinger by recounting his formative years, his rise and eventually his disappearance from the public eye; Slawenski doesn’t rely on hearsay, and has done a good job at playing detective. Slawenski doesn’t rewrite history, but J.D. Salinger: A Life is an honest account of a writer who really didn’t want to be worshiped or praised.  Slawenski is respectful of Salinger’s wishes, and delivers a worthy biography.

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The notion of writers “peaking” is a scary one.  The notion of anyone peaking is really quite scary, but in the case of a fiction writer, to think that one could be capable at one point of writing a fantastic novel that actually resonates with people, and then never be able do it again, it’s frightening.  To be a writer, and manage to convince yourself that you’ve got something to contribute to the world and succeed, only to realize as a certain point that you’ve lost your knack, well, I can think of a handful of preferable diseases.

I don’t know if Adam Schwartz believed that he had at some point peaked, but his story is unique.  He published a story in the New Yorker in 1988, and then again in 1992.  He’d had a big shot agent and a solid book deal, but only now, in 2011, is his book, A Stranger on the Planet, being released.  What’s more, the route, by which it found publication, has become nearly mythological in this day and age:  A Stranger on the Planet was discovered by readers at Soho Press in the slush pile.

A Stranger on the Planet is the life story of Seth Shapiro.  We meet him as a young boy who, though interested in baseball, is most wrapped up in the world of his family: his mother, with whom he has an oddly sexual relationship, his father who left him for another life with another family, and his twin sister who understands him often better than he does himself.  We see the many stages of Seth’s life, from his sexual awakening following a death-defying swim across a lake on the day of the moon landing, to his college years in which his girlfriend learns that she’s a lesbian.  We follow him into adulthood where he works as a stand up comic and English teacher in Chicago and then into a tumultuous and ill-fated marriage.

It would be remiss not to mention how unflinchingly Jewish this novel is. Every adventure we experience as Seth is strongly grounded in the Jewish American experience.  From his stint as the token Jewish in-law to his wife’s WASP-y family to his Orthodox brother Seamus looking constant disapproval of his lifestyle.  At times reading this book, I found myself fantasizing about cultural relics of American Judaism’s past.  Picturing this novel as it unfolded, glimpses of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Seize the Day seemed to appear alongside the novel’s world.  A Stranger on the Planet is the first great Jewish novel of 2011 and a book for outsiders of all stripes, one that serves as a reminder of how many chapters we all get.

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This year was a kind one to three great Jewish writers; two of which seemed to never get the respect they deserve, and another who has unjustly fallen into the honorable mention category of the great writers of the 20th Century.  Saul Bellow, I.J. Singer, and Bruno Schulz have all had some of their works re-released or reassessed in 2010.

Saul Bellow is a victim of the underrated/highly rated trap.  He’s a big name–even the sound of it has resonance and power–but I wonder sometimes if anyone is really even reading him anymore.  Heck, Harper’s just asked that this month.  He has two books to be released this year, so hopefully the answer will once again be, “yes.”

A lot of fanfare has been made in anticipation of the release of Saul Bellow: Letters, and for good reason: Bellow was a great correspondent who wrote to cache of literary lions from Philip Roth to Bernard Malamud.  In Letters, Bellow writes inspiring notes to younger writers, who no doubt looked up to him, as well as admonishing fellow Nobel laureat, William Faulkner, for being anti-communist, and for supporting the anti-Semitic poet, Ezra Pound.  You get the full spectrum of the man, from the testier moments to his lighter side.  His sincerity and goodness is best illustrated by a letter to Isaac Bashevis Singer, congratulating –in Yiddish, no less– the writer on a Nobel award that Bellow himself had won two years prior.  A letter in September of 1966 to colleague Richard Stern, sees Bellow make mention of a memoir of D. Schwartz — that book would not come out until 1975 Pulitzer Prize winning (fictonal) novel, Humboldt’s Gift.

Humboldt’s Gift is included in Bellow: Novels, 1970-1983.  Whether you want to buy three novels in one, or simply want to adorn your bookshelves with another Library of America title, these three late-period novels are all worth your attention.

Bellow himself was an admirer of Isaac Bashevis Singer.  Bellow first translated Singer’s story of the simple old country dweller, Gimpel The Fool, in 1953.  But Bellow was also in on the secret of Isaac’s older brother, Israel Joshua Singer.  Bellow’s name adorns the cover of the newest reissue of I.J. Singer’s, The Brothers Ashkenazi, calling it “a wonderful novel.” With all due respect, Mr. Bellow, that is something of an understatement.

After reading The Brothers Ashkenazi, it’s clear that I.J. Singer was the stronger writer of the two brothers; as the book moves beyond the shtetl tales of magic and evil that his brother would become famous for.  It’s a picture of greed, tradition and family; losing faith and longing for the past, as well as providing a fine sketch of shtetl life in the early days of the 20th Century.  While Isaac had the flair of a master storyteller, Israel was the better writer.  I thought of Tolstoy, or even Dickens, throughout so much of this The Brothers, but all the while, I.J. Singer is nostalgic in a way even Proust would have admired.  This is not a book just for fans of Jewish books, but for readers of all kinds of great literature.

Finally, here is to hoping that 2010 will be remembered as the year that Bruno Schulz, one of the greatest Polish Jewish writers of the 20th century, finally gets an audience worthy of his work.

While the tragic story of Schulz’s death during WWII is just one of millions, his works need to be celebrated as masterpieces by an audience wider than than fellow writers John Updike and Philip Roth — or as inspirations for the Brothers Quay stop motion animation films.

In the last year, Jonathan Safran Foer has became the latest writer to champion Schulz; going as far as to using the late writer’s book, The Street of Crocodiles, as the starting point for his own own book/art project, Tree of Codes.  Schulz’s work has flirted with capturing the attention of a larger audience in the past, soliciting nods from Cynthia Ozick and David Grossman.  Unfortunately, neither of them had the crossover appeal of Safran Foer, who might finally bring the man (who should be considered Poland’s Kafka) to the audience he’s deserved all these years.

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James Wolcott talks about Cynthia Ozick at Vanity Fair.  Titles the article “The Kvetcher in the Rye.”  Even though I think he’s bashing Ozick (who I love), I still have to give him points for cleverness.

The Daily Beast interviews Ms. Ozick.

Making sense of Aleksandar Hemon’s “Jumbo Lexicon.”

Saul Bellow had a girlfriend named Yetta, and other interesting things I never knew until reading this review.

Talking about the weirdness that is Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes.

The post Weekly Yiderati: Cynthia Ozick Gets Dissed And Interviewed, Saul Bellow’s Girlfriend Yetta, Jumbo Lexicons And More appeared first on Jewcy.