Imagining the Holocaust

by Daniel R. Schwarz

In Imagining the Holocaust, Daniel R. Schwarz examines widely read Holocaust narratives which have shaped the way we understand and respond to the events of that time. He begins with first person narratives - Wiesel's Night and Levi's Survival at Auschwitz - and then turns to searingly realistic fictions such as Borowski's This Way to the Gas Chamber, Ladies and Gentlemen, before turning to the Kafkaesque parables of Appelfeld and the fantastic cartoons of Spiegleman's Maus books. Schwarz argues that as we move further away from the original events, the narratives authors use to render the Holocaust horror evolve to include fantasy and parable, and he shows how diverse audiences respond differently to these highly charged and emotional texts.

Genres: Holocaust

368 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 1999

About the author

Daniel R. Schwarz is Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English Literature and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1968.

He is the author of the just released Crises and Turmoil at the New York Times, 1999-2009. His books include In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century (2008, )Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel, 1890-1930 (2004), Broadway Boogie Woogie: Damon Runyon and the Making of New York City Culture (2003), Imagining the Holocaust (1999), Rereading Conrad (2001), Reconfiguring Modernism: Explorations in the Relationship Between Modern Art and Modern Literature (1997), Narrative and Representation in Wallace Stevens (1993)--a Choice selection for best academic book of 1993; The Case for a Humanistic Poetics (1991), The Transformation of the English Novel, 1890-1930 (1989; revised 1995), Reading Joyce's "Ulysses" (2004; orig. ed 1987); The Humanistic Heritage: Critical Theories of the English Novel from James to Hillis Miller (1986); Conrad: The Later Fiction (1982); Conrad: "Almayer's Folly" through "Under Western Eyes" (1980); and Disraeli's Fiction (1979).

He has edited Joyce's The Dead (1994) and Conrad's The Secret Sharer (1997) in the Bedford Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism Series, and co-editor of Narrative and Culture (1994). He has also edited the Penguin Damon Runyon (2008). He is General Editor of the multi-volume critical series Reading the Novel for which he wrote Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel, 1890-1930 (2004) and is now writing Reading the European Novel.

Schwarz also has published about 20 travel articles, about 90 poems, and a little fiction, all of which are available on his web page http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/drs6/. Soon to appear is a festschrift in his honor entitled Reading Texts, Reading Lives: Essays in the Tradition of Humanistic Cultural Criticism in Honor of Daniel R. Schwarz.