Beyond the Golden Door: Jewish American Drama and Jewish American Experience (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History) (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: Jewish American, New York, American Jews (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Beyond the Golden Door is a learned, provocative survey of a significant strain in American theatre."--American Theatre

 

"What a delight to read Julius Novick. He chooses exactly the right plays to focus on, lays out their substance with clarity, and then selects precisely the right quotes from his great predecessors and contemporary scholars in the field to heighten his own astute delvings into this extraordinary wealth of material.  Perceptively, he shows you how the plays link to one another to form one of the great chains that make up America's cultural DNA. This is a beautiful and necessary book."--Michael Feingold, chief theater critic, The Village Voice 

 

"Novick articulately and knowledgeably demonstrates his own emotional stake in examining drama by American Jews. By linking the works he discusses to his deep personal feelings and values, he seems to be wrestling with the difficult task of trying to preserve a Jewish identity in a secular, multicultural American society...Novick’s passion for his subject informs “Beyond the Golden Door” from beginning to end."--The Jewish Daily Forward

 

"Novick’s prose is highly readable. Beyond the Golden Door proves to be a treatise that fascinates and entertains even as it stimulates thought."--www.jewish-theatre.com

“An impressive display of the rich and varied contributions of Jewish playwrights to the American theatrical repertoire. With judiciously chosen examples, Novick demonstrates how, since the early twentieth century, plays about Jews have been moving and delighting audiences while showcasing the evolving challenges of being Jewish in America. This is a fine accounting of a significant component of American culture, a book to be hailed."--Ellen Schiff, author, From Stereotype to Metaphor: The Jew in Contemporary Drama; editor, Awake & Singing: Six Great American Jewish Plays

 “Julius Novick offers a fascinating study of ethnic identity in America.  Though this story is about Jews, about their particular and distinctive story, it speaks to a much broader story about the American mosaic. In a century wracked by interethnic savagery around the world, this book gives some real insight into how and why America is different. Written with the same sparkle and wry wit that has graced Novick’s theater reviews over the years,  Beyond the Golden Door is an entertaining read as well as a serious  contribution to modern scholarship.”--Eileen Blumenthal, Professor of Theater Arts, Rutgers University; author of Puppetry: A World History

 

"This study of Jewish American drama as it reflects Jewish American experience is the first book on the subject and a brilliant one: comprehensive, insightful, eloquent, and witty—including trenchant analyses of plays by Elmer Rice, Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Joseph Stein, Alfred Uhry, Donald Margulies, Herb Gardner, and Wendy Wasserstein."--Jewish Book World

 

 

Product Description

Clifford Odets. Arthur Miller. Paddy Chayefsky. Neil Simon. Jules Feiffer. Wendy Wasserstein. Tony Kushner. These leading American playwrights do not just happen to be Jewish: they are Jewish playwrights. They and other Jewish playwrights have written out of their own experience, for general American audiences, about what it feels like to be twentieth-century American Jews. Beyond the Golden Door is the first book devoted to showing how Jewish playwrights have dramatized the great struggle to balance Old World heritage with New World opportunity—a struggle with implications for all American ethnicities.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (May 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403970092
• ISBN-13: 978-1403970091
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,515,588 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A FIRST-RATE BOOK, August 31, 2008

By	Daniel J. Sullivan "Theater Critic" (Minneapolis MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A first-rate book on a topic that, strangely, hasn't been much explored. Jewish-American novelists, yes. Jewish-American playwrights, no. Maybe because Odets, Arthur Miller, etc., resist and resent that categorization. Novick sheds light on a complicated subject without further complicating it or dumbing it down. Highly recommended.