Two previous Jewish males are sitting on a park bench, the place one has been bemoaning the worldwide return of anti-Semitism. After some time, his companion interrupts him to say that as he sees it, au contraire, the Jews have by no means been in higher form: They dominate the monetary world, they management the media, politicians are of their pockets, Israel is stronger and extra menacing than ever. The primary man, astonished, asks on what he bases this. “Easy,” says the second man, “I hearken to no radio, learn no newspapers, and watch solely Al Jazeera.”
The joke got here to thoughts whereas studying Josh Lambert’s “The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, and Postwar American Literature.” Mr. Lambert is an affiliate professor of English and director of the Jewish Research Program at Wellesley School, and in his guide he surveys the affect of Jews in publishing and literature, mainly within the final half of the twentieth century. He experiences that, till nicely into the 1900s, Jews in America tended to be excluded from main publishing corporations and journal editorial jobs and from professorships in literature departments in universities. As soon as boundaries based mostly on prejudice got here down, Jews attained positions of affect and infrequently employed different Jews, beneficial Jewish college students, and practiced pretty in depth literary nepotism. Nothing improper with nepotism, I at all times say, for those who maintain it within the household.
