Melvin Jules Bukiet
Author of Neurotica: Jewish Writers on Sex
About the Author
Melvin Jules Bukiet is the author of five other works of fiction, most recently "Signs & Wonders". He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College & lives in New York City. (Bowker Author Biography)
Works by Melvin Jules Bukiet
Nothing Makes You Free: Writings by Descendants of Jewish Holocaust Survivors (2002) — Editor; Contributor — 66 copies
Associated Works
The New Diaspora: The Changing Landscape of American Jewish Fiction (2015) — Contributor — 14 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1953
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- New York, New York, USA
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
- Education
- Columbia University
Sarah Lawrence College - Occupations
- novelist
professor
short story writer
anthologist - Organizations
- Sarah Lawrence College
Members
Reviews
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 12
- Also by
- 6
- Members
- 373
- Popularity
- #64,664
- Rating
- 3.3
- Reviews
- 5
- ISBNs
- 28
- Languages
- 3
"How do you cope when the most important events in your life occurred before you were born? What does this do to your sense of time? Of authenticity? As they were ghosts in history, you’re a ghost in your own safe little suburban bedroom with cowboy lampshades. All you know is that you’ve received a tainted inheritance, secondhand knowledge of the worst event in history.“
Bukiet has compiled an anthology of writing (both fiction and non-fiction) by what he terms the “Second Generation” or 2G, that is, children of Holocaust Survivors. As someone who has read 2G works since Helen Epstein’s 1979 book “Children of the Holocaust” and obsessively searched out others such as Thane Rosenbaum, Art Spiegelman, Carl Friedman and Yossi Klein Halevi, I was eager to read this book.
The works of 2G writers are often angrier, more strident and more acerbic than those of their parents. There is a sense of desperate futility in that rage because many 2G’s were subconsciously attempting to “save” their parents retroactively – and there are definitely trends in how that was done – much of which is conveyed in the 2G literature. With a few exceptions, the parents, the actual survivors (including the ones who wrote about the Holocaust) seemed more sorrowful, sometimes bitter but seldom enraged. They were also determined, at least superficially, to establish themselves and to rebuild their lives. It was, I think their way of proving that they were the victors, not (only) the victims. The children, were living, breathing proof of their victory.
What I particularly liked about the anthology was its international scope - many of the included works are translations. Some of the pieces are quite moving, but on the whole, I do prefer these authors' full-length works; they tend to be more nuanced. Most of the pieces convey the underlying paranoia and suspicion imparted by the parents. That paradoxical combination of suspicion and their parent's determination to build (at least the facade of) a new and thoroughly ordinary life fundamentally defined who the 2G’s were and who they became. If there is a running theme in the works in this anthology it is growing up with this paradox.… (more)