What was the Jewish ‘literary mafia’? A new book explores a common myth of postwar publishing • The European Times News

Within the postwar years, there have been so many Jews within the American publishing trade that some writers started coining a phrase to explain them: “The literary mafia.”

This mafia, they believed, secretly ensured that Jewish books and authors would get printed by the foremost publishing homes, lined within the literary press and supported on the main educational establishments — on the expense of different, non-Jewish writers, and even the “unsuitable” sorts of Jewish writers. 

Such a perception, typically pushed by antisemitism and typically by a normal feeling of literary displacement and profession frustration, was shared by figures together with Truman Capote and Flannery O’Connor to explain the feeling they felt watching their Jewish friends like Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Cynthia Ozick. In writings of the time interval, they and different notable authors believed that highly effective trade Jews have been the trigger behind any of their careers being stalled.

AN IGLOO designed from books in a Mitzpe Ramon library. (credit score: MEITAL SHARABI)

The time period was additionally employed, self-consciously, by lots of the precise outstanding Jews who labored within the literary sphere, from publishing homes to literary magazines to academia. These Jews would would typically make jokes about what number of different Jews they encountered on the prime of their industries, or categorical frustration that they weren’t on the within circle of them.

Josh Lambert, director of the Jewish Research program at Wellesley Faculty, explores the curious phenomenon of the “literary mafia” in his new e-book: “The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, And Postwar American Literature,” launched this week by Yale College Press. Drawing from the correspondences of outstanding Jewish authors, editors, publishers and teachers from the time interval, together with Knopf editor Harold Strauss, Esquire editor Gordon Lish, Columbia College professor Lionel Trilling and writer Ann Birstein, the e-book dispels the parable of the “literary mafia.” However Lambert additionally argues that Jews in positions of energy could also be inclined to assist different Jews, as a result of their private {and professional} networks are made up of Jews.

Within the e-book, Lambert unpacks the skilled and private relationships that knowledgeable this era of what he calls “Jewish literary enfranchisement” — and the methods by which such networks of affect persist into the trendy period.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

JTA: Let’s begin with the broadest potential query: Was there a “Jewish literary mafia”? And if there was, what was it?

Lambert: I feel one of the simplest ways I can reply that query is, no, there wasn’t, nevertheless it’s not uninteresting to speak about it anyway. There wasn’t the Jewish literary mafia that Truman Capote thought there was the place he mentioned, “Oh, these persons are scheming and conspiring.” And there wasn’t even the Jewish literary mafia that Jewish author Meyer Levin thought there was, the place [he thought] folks acquired collectively at events and mentioned, “We’re by no means going to speak about his e-book.” That didn’t occur.

The query that I feel is extra fascinating is: why did critical folks even speak about this? Why did this concept, this meme or trope, final for 20 or 30 years? And the reply is definitely very easy, I feel, for anybody who works in journalism, or the tradition trade. In the event you’ve labored in any trade like that for 5 minutes, you possibly can say there are some individuals who had it simpler, who had a smoother path. They acquired helped out, that they had benefits, their pitches acquired accepted faster. Even apart from that, you could have relationships with folks, and so they come to bear on who offers you an opportunity to do issues or who helps you out. 

And it’s straightforward to think about why somebody who’s on the unsuitable facet of that, in some moments, feels prefer it’s not honest, seems like one thing’s going unsuitable, seems like there’s an issue. So this trope of the “literary mafia,” it’s simply the place the place folks put their emotions concerning the improper or unfair makes use of of energy — within the case of my e-book, within the publishing trade.

Had been there circumstances the place folks used their energy inappropriately? For certain. I speak about them within the e-book. But additionally, I feel we have to discuss in a extra considerate means about, what’s that energy, that affect, that skill to form what will get learn or printed? And who has it and the way do they use that energy?

You’re a scholar of Jewish tradition and Jewish literature speaking concerning the affect of Jews within the publishing trade. There’s a component in your e-book the place you’re simply itemizing the Jews who at the moment or used to work in publishing. Why draw consideration to this when this might encourage an antisemitic studying of the historical past that you just’re presenting?

I feel that if there’s like a consistency between this e-book and my final e-book [“Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture”], it’s exactly that. I don’t need to hand the dialog to antisemites, irrespective of how robust they’re or how terrifying they’re. They shouldn’t be those who get to determine how we speak about these sorts of points. 

In my final e-book about obscenity, antisemites used it in a horrible means, in an inappropriate means, in a pernicious means. [David Duke tweeted admiringly about “Unclean Lips,” and it was cited in some antisemitic publications as “evidence” that Jews are sexual predators.] I form of knew they have been going to do this. And so they may do it with this e-book. And the factor is, I feel David Duke goes to do what he does, no matter what I do, so I’m not going to fret about that. 

However I do assume the viewers that I need to discuss to, which is Jews in America and non-Jews who care concerning the literary system who will not be antisemites — I feel the concept that we couldn’t speak about Jewish success, Jewish affect, Jewish energy solely distorts and solely stops us from understanding necessary and actually significant issues.

So, that listing: Making a listing of any form of Jew feels slightly unusual. However on the similar time, denying it or pretending it’s not there actually feels uncomfortable. 

You name the postwar interval in literature a time of “Jewish literary enfranchisement.” What prompted that, and what have been a few of the execs and cons of this sudden elevation of Jews to positions of energy in publishing, magazines and academia?

I used to be searching for a time period, and “enfranchisement” I preferred as a result of it doesn’t inform you what an individual goes to do. It simply says that they’ve a brand new alternative and a brand new means to make use of it. And what brought about that precisely continues to be arduous to disentangle from different socioeconomic adjustments occurring for Jews. We all know within the postwar interval, Jews are doing higher economically. There’s extra help politically for Jews in numerous methods. And the the success within the publishing trade is said to all that, but additionally simply associated to the expansion of those firms that Jews based within the 1910s and Nineteen Twenties which might be succeeding wildly, and which might be simply not discriminating towards Jewish workers.

It’s truly actually arduous to wrap your head round what the disenfranchisement appeared like, which didn’t imply that no single Jew ever acquired to publish something, or that no Jewish individual may ever do one thing, however actually meant that as a normal factor, Jews weren’t in decision-making positions. Whereas within the postwar interval it turns into fully unremarkable, in a literal sense, that Jews had any jobs within the area.

You assume to your self: What adjustments when there hasn’t been an individual from this explicit minority group who [now] has a gatekeeping operate on this trade? For an editor at [Jewish-owned publishing house] Knopf, Harold Strauss, the reply is that, as soon as folks from that minority group are in that place, they’re projecting their very own concepts about what this group’s id is, what it needs to be, onto their resolution making. An entire bunch of Jewish editors get the possibility to form a publishing program and say, these are the sorts of books that I feel folks will need to learn. And I feel that it’s completely a combined bag. 

[Knopf] did an exquisite job of publishing Yiddish in translation. Why was it ready to do this? As a result of they actually preferred high-prestige European literature, and so they can current some Yiddish literature not as sweatshop poetry, however like Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. On the similar time, a part of what Knopf was extra comfy with than another publishers, as a result of it was a Jewish home, was stuff that I feel most of us would have a look at and say was antisemitic. Stuff like H. L. Mencken writing a pair passages about Jews because the worst group of individuals on the planet.

It was virtually like, as a result of they have been self-conscious of their id as Jews, that they felt extra like they might publish a few of this antisemitic writing as a approach to virtually keep at bay accusations that they have been a part of a literary mafia.

You’ve chapters on ingrained misogyny and blatant situations of nepotism amongst Jews in publishing homes. What are the teachings for Jews to remove from these chronicles of the failings of literary leaders of the time?

I’ll communicate to the nepotism piece as a result of I feel that’s a part of the place the place it’s clearest. Nepotism is that this huge drive in our society. If you concentrate on your pals, folks you already know, folks you’ve grown up with, it makes an unlimited distinction in folks’s lives whether or not they have rich dad and mom and grandparents or not. That is typically true of Western tradition. The factor that’s totally different is that, three or 4 generations in the past, most American Jews couldn’t count on that form of inheritance. And within the final 20, 30, 40 years, that’s change into way more frequent. 

It’s not ubiquitous. It’s not everybody within the American Jewish neighborhood, nevertheless it actually does change the place Jews sit, vis-a-vis different folks in America, by way of their benefits. What do you need to do with the benefits and privileges and energy that you just’re given? If we will agree that it’s rather a lot simpler for a younger Jewish one who occurs to be bookish to get a job in publishing, to achieve that profession, and we care about bigger social justice points, I feel that it pushes us to need to ask questions like, what can we do? 

As a mother or father myself, I do know: I really like my youngsters. It’s not like I need my youngsters to not succeed. However I do need to create programs that aren’t saying that the kids of essentially the most privileged folks will proceed to be essentially the most privileged folks in each occasion.

This 12 months’s Pulitzer winner for fiction, Joshua Cohen’s “The Netanyahus,” is an especially particular rendering of American Jewish life and intra-Jewish politics. It’s not dissimilar to the scene that you just depict within the e-book of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow and all these different Jews profitable main literary prizes within the ’50s. Is the thought of the “Jewish literary mafia” nonetheless with us?

There’s completely no query that Jews nonetheless are outstanding and profitable and thriving. And for those who gave me three faculty youngsters who’re eager to work in publishing and one was a Jewish child, my cash can be on them that they’d have the very best likelihood of succeeding — as a result of they’ll have essentially the most connections, and so on.

That Pulitzer resolution, when a prize like that occurs, it feels prefer it tells you one thing concerning the cultural second. The Pulitzer board makes public the names of the judges on that panel that awarded the prize to Josh Cohen’s e-book. What’s actually necessary is to not consider it because the Pulitzer, however as a dialog that occurred amongst these three or 4 folks. What will we find out about them and what their pursuits are? [The jury members for the 2022 Fiction Pulitzers were Whiting Foundation director Courtney Hodell, Kirkus Reviews Editor-in-Chief Tom Beer, Wall Street Journal fiction columnist Sam Sacks, Northwestern University professor Chris Abani and Deborah Heard, former director of the Hurston/Wright Foundation supporting Black writers.]

A prize isn’t an goal or pure illustration of a e-book. It’s all the time only a story a couple of group of individuals and what they’re enthusiastic about in a selected second.

It is a meta query: You discuss concerning the relationships you have been ready to attract on your self, as a Jewish educational within the publishing house, to be able to publish this e-book, and one of many causes I’m interviewing you is that we all know one another by comparable areas: you have been a grad pupil teacher of mine, and I later participated in a Jewish writing fellowship you ran. How are you fascinated by these sorts of relationships as you’re navigating the world and your individual profession?

I actually respect the query as a result of I simply assume, on some bigger stage, that’s what I need the e-book to be fascinated by. One, extra transparency about that’s good. It’s good that we must always say that we all know one another. I don’t assume it makes the truth that you’re going to publish a bit about my e-book impossibly corrupt, or an indication of one thing deeply unsuitable. However it’s honest to say that I’d do you a favor if I may, and I most likely have, and I’d respect it for those who would do me a favor. 

I do really feel like as you pay extra consideration to that, it ought to impact the way you act and the way you deploy no matter energy you’ve amassed. One of many issues that Wellesley has is that this unimaginable alumni community, the place alums from the college are actually compelled by the thought of serving to out a up to date pupil. And I say to them, it’s value fascinated by what’s comparable and totally different in that alumni community to the Harvard alumni community. As a result of if what your alumni community does is take people who find themselves privileged and have essentially the most entry to energy and provides them an additional enhance of energy, you may need to assume that that’s not the very best factor to help. However for those who’re fascinated by industries by which girls and nonbinary folks have been historically and regularly underrepresented and discriminated towards, and the Wellesley alumni community can assist to push for extra justice and fairness in these fields, then it’s an incredible factor.

To the diploma that I’ve a task as a mentor and supporter of scholars, I’m attempting to consider: Who’re the scholars who’re least prone to get assist? It may not even be as a lot my intuition to help them as a result of they may appear much less much like me or their targets is perhaps much less aligned with me. However I can attempt to discover a means to make use of no matter benefits I’ve to assist them — bringing a form of conscientiousness to who I assist with letters of advice, who I attempt to arrange with alternatives, that kind of factor.

You argue that “we want extra literary mafias,” and also you define what that may appear like in 20, 30 years if there have been all of the sudden an abundance of Black folks in these positions of publishing energy, or different marginalized teams, and the way that may have an effect on Jews as effectively. Are you able to break that down?

If we will all acknowledge that Jews have performed this extremely outsized position and, nonetheless into the current, have performed that within the publishing trade, one of many issues you possibly can take away from that’s, it truly is OK if a gaggle has fairly disproportionate energy. 

There’s an concept of variety that it means your proportion on this trade ought to relate to your proportion within the inhabitants. And I simply don’t assume industries work like that, and energy doesn’t work like that. What you’d need to see is just not a tokenizing method to variety that takes a few folks and places them in positions of energy, however an actual shift, the place there generally is a sense that there’s by no means too many.

And I feel it’s occurring in publishing proper now in a extremely highly effective and fascinating sense. For the reason that homicide of George Floyd, there’s a motion, an actual consideration to white supremacy in American tradition. The publishing trade has employed some African American editors in actually outstanding positions. And I feel that’s nice. And what I’d actually hope for, what I hope the historical past of Jews suggests, is after they’ve employed these outstanding folks in these outstanding positions, they need to rent 400 extra.