Passage From Home (Masterworks of Modern Jewish Writing Series) - Softcover

Rosenfeld, Isaac

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0910129754 ISBN 13: 9780910129756

Publisher: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2009

Synopsis

This outstanding family novel, set in a Jewish neighborhood of Chicago, is "the fullest articulation of the generational conflict between Jewish fathers and [sins]," writes Alexander Bloom in his 1986 book Prodigal Sons. The central character, a 15-year-old boy in rebellion against the petit bourgeois values of his family, engineers an affair between his flamboyant aunt and his easy-going Gentile cousin by marriage. He then leaves his father and moves into the house of this new couple, where he experiences the excitement and problems of an open relationship.

About this title

About the Author

Isaac Rosenfeld (1918-1956) was one of the leading writers in the heyday of the Partisan Review, The Nation, Commentary, and Midstream; his work contributed to the intellectual debate in the 1940's and 1950's. Today he is considered one of the leading American intellectual critics of the century.

Reviews

"I remember the year in which I first felt respect for human intelligence. I was 14, a precocious child, as sensitive as a burn. Human intelligence meant my own," provocatively begins this classic bildungsroman set in Chicago of the early 1930s. Best remembered as a "New York intellectual" with a regular critical presence in the pages of the Partisan Review and the New Republic, Rosenfeld pits alter ego Bernard Miller against his father in an age-old generational battle: "I knew what fathers must feel when children break away; when I should have children, I would feel the same. For fathers, deep in themselves, were still sons, and still remembered the love they had broken; and sons were forever preparing to enact, and regret, an unchanging transgression." Bernard is smitten by his aunt Minna and the bohemian, erotic lifestyle she represents, and drawn to the unflappable Willy, a gentile cousin by marriage. He contrives an affair between them and, after an argument with his father, moves in with the couple. This was a 28-year-old Rosenfeld's first novel, originally issued in 1946 (he died a decade later). Although the hero's rebellion and subsequent disenchantment with his "adoptive" parents are by now a familiar theme and Minna's pariah status within the family much dated, many a modern, alienated youth will find his tale of woe appealing. Particularly sparkling are depictions of Jewish family life and of Bernard's longing, unfulfilled, for a brand of Judaism less diluted than the one he has inherited.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Markus Wiener Publishers
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0910129754
• ISBN 13: 9780910129756
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 306