Chaim Potok

“In his previous work on Chaim Potok (Conversations with Chaim Potok, Chaim Potok and Jewish-American Culture), Daniel Walden has shown himself to be the go-to resource on the writer and his cultural impact. Now, in Chaim Potok: Confronting Modernity Through the Lens of Tradition, Walden has once again demonstrated his deft understanding of the subject. Pulling together an impressive array of contributors and working with some of the most prominent Jewish American literary scholars today, Walden presents us with a vast tapestry displaying the many hues of Potok's narrative worlds. With essays concerning modernity and tradition, the Torah and the Kabbalah, and myth and history, Walden's collection stands as the text by which all subsequent studies will now be judged.” —Derek P. Royal, founder and executive editor, Phillip Roth Studies

“A truly fine treatment by Daniel Walden, one of the founding figures in Jewish American literary criticism, this volume brings new historical and literary attention to Chaim Potok. Essays draw on new biographical and manuscript materials to provide fresh, critical treatments of Potok’s work during a major sociocultural revaluation of mid-twentieth-century American culture. This is an important book about a beloved and continuously read twentieth-century Jewish American writer.” —Gloria Cronin, editor of Saul Bellow Journal

“Daniel Walden’s Confronting Modernity Through the Lens of Tradition is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the crucial role played by Chaim Potok’s novels in examining the clash between modernity and faith. This skillfully edited work contains both critical essays and personal reflections by leading Potok experts. The novelist was a personal friend of Walden, and this volume can be seen as the editor's memorial to the late writer.” —Alan L. Berger, Florida Atlantic University