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Jewish American immigrant fiction continued: the contemporary Russian story.

Article Excerpt
The Last Chicken in America: A Novel in Stories, By Ellen Litman, New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2007

Irving Howe's famous observation that the power of Jewish American fiction would wane as the generation shaped by immigration fell silent seems less true than when it appeared in 1977. Since then young writers like Allegra Goodman and Nathan Englander have re-opened the dialogue between Jewishness and modern America, creating a vibrant post-immigration literature. Yet Howe was wrong in a way he could not have foreseen: exciting young writers have recently emerged from among the Jews who emigrated to North America in the waning years of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the post-Soviet era. Critically and popularly acclaimed works such as Gary Shteyngart's novels, The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan, and David Bezmozgis's collection of short stories, Natasha, have revitalized the venerable Jewish literary theme of the perils and pleasures of becoming American (or Canadian). Ellen Litman is the latest emigre to tackle this subject in her immensely affecting novel-in-stories.

In a narrative voice closer to Bezmozgis's calm detachment than to Shteyngart's manic satirical flights, Litman portrays Russian Jewish immigrants' experience through a loosely connected series of stories set in Pittsburgh. Much of the book concerns generational conflict: the elderly suffer from the loneliness of dislocation and the loss of respect normally accorded to older people, the middle-aged are suddenly bereft of the good jobs, social networks, and cultural knowledge that hitherto sustained their...

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