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C:\Documents and SettingsMproctor.ULLALocal Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK36\Copyright - thesis.doc 1 GENRE AND IDENTITY IN THE WORKS OF DAVID GROSSMAN Tamara Lynn Levine Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department University College, London Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2004 UMI Number: U592244 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U592244 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 2 ABSTRACT Genre and Identity in the Works of David Grossman David Grossman is a central figure in Israeli literature. Widely translated, his work has achieved international acclaim for its bold and innovative engagement in the events and mood of the day. In this study, the first monograph on his work in English, I focus on his process of constructing identity through storytelling. Key themes of identity - adolescence and parent-child relationships, sexuality and the body-soul dichotomy - are interwoven into diverse literary genres. My method is to examine the paradigms and significance of Grossman’s literary genres, placing them in the context of Israeli and Western literature. I analyse his technique of manipulating traditional structural features of these genres to reveal the ambiguities and changing nature of identity. I show how he acknowledges his literary forefathers by his use of intertext to develop identity. I contend that Grossman’s focus on the adolescent protagonist pinpoints a young person’s confrontation with his inherited identity. I discuss The Book of Intimate Grammar as anti-Bildungsroman, illustrating the instability experienced en route to a cogent sense of self and an accommodation with the adult world. Grossman breaks new ground in his seminal work of Holocaust fiction, See under: Love. Moving beyond the sphere of witness accounts and their consequent fiction, he uses a fragmented plot and complex narratives, revealing the impossibility of viewing the Holocaust as a single synchronic story, exposing the damaged identities that remain. In Be Mv Knife, his more recent epistolary novel, I find a shift in his construction of identity. Rhythms of internal and external languages combine in this exploration of sexuality and parenthood. I suggest that his narrative techniques of multiple voices and indeterminate endings enhance reader involvement. They are a call to share Grossman’s enduring commitment to a “wide-hearted humanism”. This credo involves creating an ethical identity of self-examination, facilitating the recognition of difference in self and others, as evidenced in his socio-political novel and essays. I highlight Grossman's artistry: his sensitivity to registers of language, expressing sociological aspects of Israeli life in the past decades. Ultimately, for Grossman, both the world and the “I” are but a narrative. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ....................................................................................................... 2 Introduction: ‘‘Who am I?” In Search of Self................................................................ 4 Chapter One: Stories as Seeds........................................................................................ 27 Chapter Two: The Janus Face of Israeli Self-Image - Literature and Politics in The Smile o f the Lamb, and The Yellow Wind................................ 54 Chapter Three: The Phoenix Test of Holocaust Writing in See Under: Love.................................................................................................... 88 Chapter Four: The Kid in the Cupboard - The Adolescent Struggle for Identity in Grossman’s Bildungsromane: The Book o f Intimate Grammar and Someone to Run W................................................................................ ith 136 Chapter Five: “I Wrote a Letter to My Love... ” Epistolary Fiction in Be My K nife.......................................................................................... 204 Conclusion............................................................................................................ 229 Appendix ............................................... 235 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 239 Acknowledgements................................................................................................. 250 4 INTRODUCTION “Who am I?” - In Search of Self “I feel a certain hunger for blood; for, that is, writing about literature that talks of human lives and choices as if they matter to us all... One of the things that makes literature something deeper and more central for us than a complex game, deeper even than those games... that move us to wonder by their complex beauty, is that... it speaks about us, about our lives and choices and emotions, about our social existence and the totality of our connections. As Aristotle observed, it is deep, and conducive to our inquiry about how to live, because it does not simply (as history does) record that this or that event happened; it searches for patterns of possibility - of choice, and circumstance, and the interaction between choice and circumstance - that turn up in human lives with such a persistence that they must be regarded as our possibilities.”1 In the above quotation Martha Nussbaum illuminates a belief in the power of literature and the vigorous role of the author in qualifying choices for the reader as to how one should live, a role which I believe David Grossman richly fulfils. Israeli writers, in particular, are “addressing the existential question of where one identity ends and another begins”, confirms Amy Wilentz.2 For Grossman as writer, there is a symbiotic energy which underlines the power of literature, and enhances its influence on personal insight. The process of writing a story is a profoundly invigorating one, “an act of self-definition”. This is an intensity which Grossman relishes: “I want it to destabilize and dissolve all the comfortable defences of my life. ... My soul is on guard.”3 Introduction 5 In this introduction I discuss problematics I have encountered in my analysis of Grossman’s work and the “patterns of possibility”4 he creates in the course of his writing, the “interaction between choice and circumstance”5 that gives his literature such power. Maureen Whitebrook, too, has argued that novels “present choices, the implications and consequences of choices.”6 The challenge of writing a critical work about a living author is linked precisely to the absence of a point of summation or a final vision of his opus. Nevertheless David Grossman’s work merits a close analytical study because of his dominance in Israeli literature. Widely translated, his work has achieved international acclaim for its bold and innovative engagement with the events and mood of the day. Bom in 1954, six years after the founding of the State of Israel, Grossman has grown up with the country. His work, beginning with his first collection of stories published in 1983, continues to reflect the cross-currents and multiple voices which have shaped Israeli society. I am aware that the search for narrative identity will continue and perhaps