📚 KPA 2023 Presentation: Thoughts

At the KPA Conference at Center College in Kentucky, I presented my paper on Cynthia Ozick's The Puttermesser Papers. Here's the abstract for the presentation:

        Since The Puttermesser Papers’ release, scholars and critics have failed to treat it as a “novel;” most focus on one or two of the chapters, rather than dealing with it as a whole. This is problematic for many reasons, but most importantly is that qualms with the novel’s form hinge on the claim that the chapters are not interconnected, that there is no overarching theme, no character journey for Puttermesser. This does a disservice to Ozick’s vision and critique of Puttermesser (a Jew facing the modern world) longing for the recovery of some sort of lost, perfect, idyllic connection. She creates a golem child so that she may recover Paradise on Earth, invents an imaginary Uncle so she might recover some lost connection to her Jewish heritage, and more, all in the name of recovery and connection. In this presentation, I will offer a reading of the novel, not just its chapters, arguing that it is coherent and has a central purpose; that being Puttermesser’s longing for the recovery of, and her “demand” of, perfect connections with the past, people, and places, and further, how Ozick believes this is representative of, and even potentially dangerous to, Jewish culture. 

The other panelists were so fascinating, presenting on topics such as the modern gothic, Greek-American literature, and issues in Spanish literature; I was particularly struck by some of the interesting discussion we had after about humor, identity, and the traps presented by pernicious stereotypes in the modern world.