Description:
Explore the mind of J. J. Steinfeld, a unique voice in Canadian literature, through insightful essays on his fiction, poetry, and plays. This collection delves into Steinfeld's exploration of Holocaust memory, Jewish identity, and the absurdities of modern life, offering a critical perspective on his wide-ranging body of work.
Discover the themes that define Steinfeld's writing, from second-generation trauma to cultural displacement, as leading scholars analyze his distinctive style and sardonic wit. This volume is for readers interested in Canadian and Jewish literature, Holocaust studies, and the power of art to confront history. Gain a deeper understanding of Steinfeld's contribution to Atlantic Canadian letters and his unique perspective on the human condition.
Brief description:
Acclaimed for his narrative lyric suites (Whylah Falls and Execution Poems), his lyric "colouring books" (Blue, Black, Red, and Gold), his selected poems (Blues and Bliss), his opera libretti and plays (Beatrice Chancy and Trudeau: Long March, Shining Path), George Elliott Clarke now presents us with his epic-in-progress, Canticles, a work that views History as a web of imperialism, enslavement, and insurrection. A native Africadian, Canada's 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate ranges the atlas and ransacks the library to ink lines unflinching before Atrocity and unquiet before Oppression.
Review Quotes:
Oscillating between the chronotopes of World War II and contemporary North America, [Steinfeld's] narratives form intriguing circuits of connection and disconnection [...]. Steinfeld's conversation with Kafka accords with the view that history's clocks are not in unison and that their worlds split apart and clash in fearful asymmetry.
--Michael Greenstein