The Prophetic Delmore Schwartz
Even if it is in David Mamet’s sense of a “lapsed Talmudist,” my method of reading is Talmudic. When I read, I ask myself, and the text in hand, endless questions, questions that often engage with the various texts I’ve read over the years. This hypertextual mess sometimes clogs up the margins of my books and slows down my writing, particularly when I want to speak clearly to a general audience, as I often do as editor of JBooks.com.
Over the course of this series, I will apply this type of reading to something other than my own work. The columns will consider material from or referred to by Josh Lambert’s “American Jewish Fiction.” The first installment was about novelist Nathanael West, this one looks at Delmore Schwartz through the iconic opening to his classic short story (and eponymous collection) “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.”
Ken Gordon is the editor of JBooks.com.
Read Joshua Lambert’s review of “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO