Introduction

These became part of that child who went forth every day，and who now goes，and will always go forth every day.

—Walt Whitman，“There Was a Child Went Forth”

As a literary genre，the Bildungsroman generally deals with the idea of bildung，or formation，usually of a young man who through cultivation，education，character-shaping，either grows up by assimilating into the society smoothly，or stays at the threshold of the adulthood by hesitating to enter the society in a circular path.^[1] This study uses the term “Bildungsroman” in the Yiddish meaning which is，in accordance with Bernard Sherman，identical to the German Bildungsroman and Erziehungsroman.^[2] The term Bildungsroman was coined by Karl Morgenstern，an obscure professor of rhetoric，in his lecture “On the Spirit and Connection of a Series of Philosophical Novels” in the early 1820s with specific reference to Wilhelm Meister.

In the light of its ambiguity，Morgenstern’s term did not gain currency until Wilhelm Dilthey，a famous German philosopher，stretched it in Das Erlebnes und die Dichtung（Poetry and Experience）in 1913.^[3] He held that the Bildungsroman examines a “legitimate course” of an individual’s development，each stage having its own specific value and serving as “the ground for a higher stage”，an upward and onward vision of human growth nowhere “more brightly and confidently expressed than in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister.”^[4] The reason why Dilthey designates the growth as “legitimate” is because it is natural process that children grow into youths，then into grown-ups who are ready to invest their talents in the love and work of the civil society they belong to. Accordingly，Dilthey stresses the close relationship between the growing protagonists and the society. Thus，the premise of Dilthean bildung is that the contradiction between the individual and society does not worsen further into hostility. And the final movement toward adulthood is that the protagonist finds his position in society and identifies himself with the world around him by way of rectifying his own faults，and perfecting his characters from the state of innocence about the life and society.

Apparently，Dilthey’s successful bildung requires the existence of a social context that will facilitate the unfolding of inner capacities，leading the young person from ignorance and innocence to wisdom and maturity. Through careful nurturing，the protagonist should reach the point at which he can accept a responsible role in a friendly social community. Dilthey’s ideal bildung is a journey of smooth and uncomplicated course in a harmonious and enabling social context for growth，as in Goethe’s utopian Tower society. The distance between the ideal bildung and actual impossibility of ideal growing-up within a certain culture has led some critics to deny the value of the Bildungsroman as a literary genre，for not even the prototypical Wilhelm Meister seems fully to correspond to the theoretical ideal.^[5] Susanne Howe^[6] is most informative about the non-Goethean prototypes for the English Bildungsroman，in her study Wilhelm Meister and His English Kinsmen（1930），ranging from the Bunyanesque hero looking for salvation through a world peopled with allegorical representations of virtue and vice，to the picaresque-hero whose adventures take him instructively through various strata of society，to the quest-hero like Parsifal，who learns through painful experience how to reach his goal，and what his goal is worth. Susanne How’s Bildungsheld（the hero of the bildung plot）stands not only for a synthesis of these various earlier heroes，but for modern，post-enlightenment youth in general，who is every young person. “Only in this light can we be very much by him. His enthusiasm and his confidence，his indecision and his errors，his sponge-like way of absorbing every influence to which he is exposed without profiting visibly thereby，his lack of humor — all these are vaguely touching only as youth are always touching，when it is not maddening.”^[7]

Howe’s understanding of Bildungsroman has a further interpretation in Jerome Hamilton Buckley’s Seasons of Youth：the Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding.^[8] Sharing the similarities of a happy ending with the classical Bildungsroman，Howe’s and Buckley’s researches on the English Bildungsroman contribute to the process of the protagonist’s process of formation，which emphasizes that the provinciality hinders his free imagination and that the hegemony of the family represented by his father prevents him from realizing his ideals. These differences of the English Bildungsroman，as a bridge over the classical Bildungsroman and its American counterpart，prophesy the coming of the American Bildungsroman. However，Bildungsroman in American literature does not stray away from German tradition until Mordecai Marcus Americanizes it.^[9] He uses anthropologically American “Initiation story” and “Novel of Initiation” as synonymic term of German Bildungsroman in “What is an Initiation Story？” in 1960.

In Marcus’s Americanized definition of Bildungsroman，he combines the anthropological initiation rituals with the meaning of the Bildungsroman，putting emphasis on the initiation process from innocence to experience，or on recognizing oneself and the world through epiphanies. These definitions outline simply the development and variation of Bildungsroman from German to English and to American literatures，which sustain the idea of bildung in different ways. Comparatively，the Germans tend to focus attention on the individual’s self-cultivation，while neglecting responsibility for the national culture. The English have tried，with marked success，to be attentive toward both：one’s development as an I depends not only on the richness of one’s inner life，but on the relations one has with the people — family，friends，acquaintances，and strangers — who constitute and share one’s social environment. The American bildung is struck，in the early stage，somewhere between the German and the English，and surpasses later its predecessors and better expresses the throbs of the modern time.

The fictional form which reveals the experience of a Jewish youth who is undergoing his initiation into the American urban city has been called “the Jewish novel of education” by Jacob Sloan，who finds it inevitable that Jews should write such novels and defines the novel of education as “a journey of exploration in which traditional values are being considered，accepted，rejected，or transfigured.”^[10] Living the divided lives of American Jews themselves，writers like Ludwig Lewisohn，Delmore Schwartz，and Issac Rosenfeld，etc. have found this literary form to provide an appropriate structure for the inward-turning process which they have undergone.

As a special literary genre，American-Jewish Bildungsroman shares some close similarities to and reveal some significant differences from the classical，the Ethnic and the American Bildungsroman. The similarities may be assigned to the conditions that dictate the terms of all such novels，the difference to the singularities of the Jewish ethos. J. Tasker Witham summarizes four generalizations about novels with adolescent protagonists，^[11] which are true of the American-Jewish Bildungsroman. Witham further proposes another set of generations for the adolescent novels of the Twenties and Thirties and those of the Forties and Fifties. He argues that novels of the Twenties and Thirties are likely to extend the action beyond the adolescence of the protagonist. The outset of puberty between twelve and sixteen for boys may be taken as the main sign of adolescence. Adolescent novels of this period are sociological in approach，whereas novels of the Forties and Fifties are psychological in orientation and cover a shorter period in the protagonist’s life. The difference here is a major one. Most of the American Jewish novels of the Forties and Fifties continue a concern with societal circumstances almost equal in importance to the psychological. Furthermore，the Jewish novelists are more likely than the non-Jewish novelists to structure their treatment of the personality of the protagonist around family inter-relationships.

So，the family novel about the saga of generations forms the sub-group Bildungsroman within American Jewish literature. A very significant theme in the family novel is to explore the relationship within the family as an organism undergoing stress. The Jews are known for the importance they give to the family，and meanwhile，the family is often in conflict，which forms to a large extent the universal determinant of the Jewish novel. The Bildungsroman，with its inside view，affords an unequalled vantage point from which to observe the conflict of values that rent Jewish family life. In the better control of the Bildungsroman，family conflict is the nightmare wherein are reenacted the frustrations and shocks of the urban society. The hopes which bring the family to America are invested in the lives of the children，whose fulfillment，achieved through freedom from poverty and pogroms，is to repay the parents for the disruption of their own lives. Family tradition primarily charges the son with the obligation of achieving success；urban processes dictate that the price of that success is the abandonment of Jewish traditions. The sons who choose a literary career are in a unique position to explore every nuance of the clash of values between worlds，using the conflict as they do as the very means of gaining the fulfillment expected of them.

In Jewish fiction，the Bildungsroman as a genre is used in a two-fold way：first，to explore a youth’s initiation into the adult world，and second，as a device to carry out an examination of spatial conditions. In the latter function，the youthful protagonist reacts like litmus paper，recording the effect on human personality of destructive spatial conditions all the more clearly because of his original innocence. Most of writers of the 20^th Century American-Jewish Bildungsroman share the same ideology and employ the same literary device. The differences among novels within a group are due primarily to qualitative disparities among the writers. The use of Jewish themes and the return of the writer to his/her boyhood/girlhood may be often been as the artful employment of the materials for what they represent to the reader as well as the candid use of the material for what they represent to the writer. The Jewish character for its resonance as a stereotype or archetype is most apparent in two of its guises. The first is the young Jew with his Depression cry of why. In Waiting for the End（1964），Leslie Fiedler raises the figure to major significance：“The autobiography of the urban Jew whose adolescence coincided with the Depression，and who walked the banks of some contaminated city river with tags of Lenin ringing in his head…has come to seem part of the mystical life history of a nation.”^[12] The second of these central images is the alienated Jew，or existentialist sufferer，whose estrangement parallels the condition of the twentieth-century modern man.

Certainly，the details of these images of the Jew are not an issue of discussion here. The make-up of radical groups，occupational indices，religious affiliations，and psychological reports on the degree of anomie may or may not indicate that American Jews have lived a more complex life than the above stereotypes indicate. According to Dennis Wrong in “Jews，Gentiles，and the New Establishment，” intellectually elite circles hold an image of the Jews which attributes to them：“intellectuality，political liberalism，intense parental solicitude with close bonds between mothers and sons… volubility and emotional expressiveness，fear of violence，and ironic humor.”^[13] These traits appear repeatedly in the Jew’s image of himself in the novel. Unquestionably，the Jew does signify radicalism and alienation in cogent enough fashion to make his portrayal as such credible. The 20^th Century American-Jewish Bildungsroman customarily employs characters and situations of indisputable familiarity. It is a literature which repeats familiar strains，achieving art through variation rather than inventiveness. The variety of fictional styles and the differing premises — sociological，political，economic，psychological，satirical，comedic，and metaphysical — of American-Jewish Bildungsroman will be contrasted to its recurrent motifs which are：conflict of children with parents，of traditional religious values with American societal demands，and of life in the ghetto with life in the outer world. The repetition of dramatic situations in a succession of different literary styles which characterizes Bildungsroman suggests something of the vitality of the 20^th Century American Jewish novel throughout the last half century.

The early 20^th Century American-Jewish Bildungsroman has more of classical hues，in which reconciliation and assimilation are the finale of almost all such novels，for the ultimate aim of the protagonist in the classical Bildungsroman is life within the larger community. Cahan’s The Rise of Davis Levinsky can be taken as a typical example，the theme of which is the protagonist’s reconciliation，guided by his lived experience，with concrete social reality. After his struggle for his formation，David realizes that the outsiders of the society seldom reach their goals，and that the material riches are actually granted by the society. However，David’s reconciliation has its ethnic difference from the classical Bildungsroman which emphasizes，in Dilthey’s definition，“the cultivation and harmonious development of the whole personality，the attaining of a goal that is happy blend of the material and spiritual.”^[14] The Bildungsroman as a genre is well suited for an exploration of the meaning of ethnicity because it focuses on the relation of a protagonist with the wider environment. The ethnic situation of the protagonist and the protagonist’s community also gives account for another transformation wrought by ethnic authors. The traditional Bildungsroman has a tendency to see conflict as personal rather than societal and aims at a reconciliation of the protagonist with society.^[15] Some ethnic protagonists，of course，reach that point of harmony with the environment through engaging themselves in the process of assimilation.

The protagonists in The Rise of David Levisky，Fanny Herself and many other early American-Jewish Bildungsroman tend to blend into the mainstream environment，but at the price of renouncing their ethnicity. Maybe more typically，Hotle thus claims，“[s]ome writers … observe the opposite lesson；it is the dominant culture that keeps them out for reasons of class，ethnicity or race.”^[16] Accordingly，some critics have rightfully questioned the possibility of a protagonist reaching harmony in a society that is hostile to his or her ethnic identity. This feature of the ethnic Bildungsroman does not solely come into being as a literary choice but because of the status of ethnicity in society at large. This reality，usually considered open or subtle economic，political，and social inequalities and their psychological consequences，must be dealt with by the ethnic protagonist not as matter of choice，but because she or he has been put into that reality through the sociopolitical arrangement of society.

In light of ethnic Bildungsromane’s reaction to an ethnic situation，critique of both the ethnic and the general environment becomes one of their important functions. Ethnic women protagonists negotiate both ethnicity and gender，as Esther Kleinbord Labovitz has noted，“the heroine of the female Bildungsroman challenge the very structure of society，raising questions of equality，not only of class，but of sexes，as well.”^[17] What may be called the ethnic transformation of the Bildungsroman consists，then，of a development away from the more exclusively personality-oriented plot of the traditional Bildungsroman and towards a more political and social vision. Jeffrey L. Sammons’s open definition of the Bildungsroman genre focusing on bildung whether the process of bildung succeeds or fails，and whether the protagonist achieves an accommodation with life and society or not^[18] gives room for this expanded vision of the genre，because a failed or problematic bildung might serve to indict the circumstances that make it problematic. Bonnie Hoover Braendlin thus defines the ethnic Bildungsroman as follows：

The Bildungsroman of … disenfranchised Americans… portrays the particular identity and adjustment problems of people whose sex or color renders them unacceptable to the dominant society；it expresses their struggle for individuation and a part in the American dream，which society simultaneously proffers and denies to them. This new Bildungsroman asserts an identity defined by the outsiders themselves or by their own cultures，not by the patriarchal Anglo-American power structure；it evinces a revaluation，a transvaluation，of traditional Bildung by new standards and perspectives.^[19]

According to Braendlin’s definition，the protagonist of ethnic coming-of-age stories strive for their bildung，they work on shaping their personalities，and often their social environment offers more hindrance than support，so that reaching harmony within a more or less hostile social order might be a tenuous proposition at best. Not to adjust to that order but to embrace ethnicity as the text outlines it and choose a more ethnically-oriented life rather than a career in the mainstream offers itself as one other alternative for the protagonist of the ethnic Bildungsroman. Disenchanted with mainstream life，the Jewish protagonist seeks some combination of the mainstream and the ethnicity for his chosen life course in The Rise of David Levinsky，Jews Without Money，Fanny Herself and other American-Jewish Bildungsroman. Ethnic Bildungsroman thus complicates the vision of what it may mean to adjust to an environment simply because the potential options have multiplied.

If the ethnicity is，more or less，the main tendency in the 20^th Century American-Jewish Bildungsroman before the Second World War，then the modernity in the post-war American-Jewish Bildungsroman is as apparent as in the American Bildungsroman，which is，to much greater extent，identical to the modern Bildungsroman. Different from the classical Bildungsroman which reflects epistemologically both the objective reality and the human nature，the modern American-Jewish Bildungsroman lays more emphasis on the inner world of human being，focusing on the description of the protagonist’s mental agony and despair although such mental pains are necessarily presented within the framework of the social reality. In the classical Bildungsroman，the protagonist goes through a happy life journey in general though he may also encounter various setbacks in the process of development，and may often appear foolish as a learner. However，the subject in the modern American-Jewish Bildungsroman，or the American Bildungsroman，undergoes a torturous journey，in spite of the fact that he may enjoy some happy moments，or even have the possibility of being accepted by the society，as Augie in The Adventures of Augie March，or Holden in The Catcher in the Rye，or Portnoy in Portnoy’s Complaint，and so on. These heroes place themselves either in the state of schizophrenia or become more uncertain about their future. It is just the uncertainty that endows the 20^th Century American-Jewish Bildungsroman with some features of modernity，even those of post-modernity. The alienated heroes with the ability to perceive the absurdity of their journey and the ills of the society，have a feeling of superiority to the adults and the society，and refuse in general to go into the adult society.

The American-Jewish Bildungsroman comprises an extensive body of literature，but comparatively little serious critical attention has been devoted to this genre. Generally，most researches have focused on such problems concerning Jewish aspects of experience as ethnic culture，religion，assimilation，alienation，Diaspora，cultural conflict，Zionism and so on. Accordingly，the theme of bildung，to some degree，becomes subordinate to the above-mentioned subjects. In 1954，Blanche Gelfant’s The American City Novel，as a literary genre study，includes several American Jewish initiation novels，most of which fall under Gelfant’s first mode，“the portrait study，” aiming at study the plot of a series of “bildung incidents” impressing the hero with the meaning，values，and manners of the city.^[20] Gelfant used the other two principal modes – “synoptic study，” with its group hero，and the “ecological study，” with its exploration of the manner of life in a small area of the city，in Meyer Levin’s The Old Bunch（1937），which follows a number of youths through the education experience. Fiedler in The Jew in the American Novel，applying the technique of the myth critic，lists the categories as：“Zion as Eros，” the ghetto novels as the “erotic-assimilationist novel，” which employs the mode of love story to dramatize the act of assimilation；“Zion as Armageddon，” the proletarian novel；and “Zion as Main Street，” the middlebrow novels.^[21] The above groupings，overlapping as they do，indicate the feasibility of categorizing the American-Jewish novels in order to clarify the nature of the genre. Then，it is Bernard Aaron Sherman who，in his 1966 dissertation，makes a systematic study of the American-Jewish Bildungsroman. He uses the term “education novel” and groups the American-Jewish（Jewish-American by Sherman）education novels chronologically. He categorizes them in three groups from the first generations to the third generation，each group representing a school sharing common themes and style.

In general term，what is called the theme of bildung in the novel is the narrative construction of the process of the formation of the subject — the protagonist forms a self-sufficient frame of the spiritual character. This process is both temporal and spatial. And we have been much concerned with the study of the temporality，on account of which，this book is an attempt to employ concerned “spatial theories” to examine bildung from the individual to the subject in the 20^th Century American-Jewish Bildungsroman with such propositions as：（1）How and in what way the space as well as time is related to the subject’s bildung；（2）How the body as a space（or the body of spatiality）enters into the constitution of the social life；（3）How space links internally to the Jewish people and participates in the construction of the Jewish subject’s identity within the complicated social relations of ethnicity，gender，class，etc.；（4）How the 20^th Century American-Jewish Bildungsroman sheds light on the subject formation mechanism from the spatial perspective.

In so far as we discover the “mystery of the subject，” the Bildungsroman is，so to speak，the most proper genre to reveal this mystic process of the formation from the individual to the subject. To the extent that the theory of space can be linked to the human bildung，perhaps Bakhtin is the first one to use chronotope to explore how time and space is related to the bildung in the Bildungsroman，though his bildung attaches much more importance to time than to space. It is maybe no surprise that people have laid more emphasis on，in the study of bildung，the time than on the space when the space is seen as “something dead，rigid，non-dialectic and still，while time is rich，productive，alive and dialectic.”^[22] In this regard，the “unchangeable” spatial world can not embody the dynamical process of growth from the childhood，through adolescent and adult period，to the old age. The traditional view of the still space，which enacts only as the background for the subject’s bildung confines us to a limited vision，leaving us unable to explore the much more important function and significance of space than that of time in subject’s initiation process. Socially and culturally，the 20^th century has witnessed a spatial turn，and the “dead” space becomes now a dynamic one which is also produced in the society. “Social reality，” remarks Soja，“is not just coincidentally spatial，existing ‘in’ space；it is presuppositionally and ontologically spatial. There is no unspecialized social reality（italics original）. Even in the realm of pure abstraction，ideology，and representation，there is pervasive and pertinent if often hidden dimension.”^[23] With “spatial turn，” we might as well admit that life experience show its more spatial experiences than temporal experiences，while it is not to declare that time has been “lost” in space，and much less in subject’s initiation process.

Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift point dialectically out that “though part of the reason for the turn to space in many disciplines has been a drive to move away from the tyrannies of historicism and developmentalism，the fact remains that space without time is as improbable as time without space.”^[24] Mike Crang shows that space is not the opposite of time. Without time，there is no space，and without space，it is also impossible to talk about，or to perceive time. Lefebvre，all of whose thoughts are almost occupied by space，is even worried about the possibility that “time is reduced to the measure of social labor，” and affirms that “time and space are not separable within a texture so conceived：space implies time，and vice versa，” and that these spaces “are not closed，but open on all sides to the strange and the foreign，to the threatening and the propitious，to friend and foe.”^[25] The echoes of Heidegger are also very strong to time-space relationship. “Space contains compressed time. That is what space is for.”^[26] In the light of bildung，the spatial body is the best example of the integration of time and space or time of a space，which will be discussed in detail in the second chapter.

Therefore，this book does not exclude the temporal importance for the formation of the subject，though it focuses on the spatial functions，with which two considerations are formulated：For one thing，this spatial approach to the Bildungsroman，especially to the analysis of the protagonist’s growth makes up for the fact that the spatiality of the bildung has been comparatively neglected in the academic and critical circles. This critical neglect is more obvious in the study of the American-Jewish Bildungsroman inasmuch as the other subjects like the identity，assimilation，religion，culture and so on so abundantly catch the eyes of the critics’. In the American Jewish writers’ memories，their lives present more spatial experience，which are accompanied by their frequent spatial transformations and changes from Europe to America，from village to city，from one ghetto to another，and so on. Their rich and complicated spatial life experiences of growing up are in a large sense written into their works，especially into their autobiographies and autobiographical fiction，which shadow their protagonists with a strong spatial feeling of drifting in an alienated modern world. We can find abundant examples，such as David in Abraham Cahan’s The Rise of David Levinsky，Sara in Anzia Yeaierska’s Bread Giver，Mikey in Michael Gold’s Jews Without Money，Augie in Saul Bellow’s The Adentures of Augie March，Holden in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye，just to list a few.

Manifold is the reason why the themes of bildung and its spatiality have been long-term neglected. Beyond the above-mentioned dominant subjects closely related to Jewish culture，religion，ethics，assimilation，alienation，identity，existence，Diaspora，Zionism，etc，among which the theme of bildung sometimes disperse，the American-Jewish Bildungsroman is often categorized into the American Bildungsroman，which overemphasizes the Americanized initiation but neglects the Jewish characteristics. It cannot be denied that the Bildungsroman of different people shares some similar characteristics such as a protagonist as a sensitive and unusually gifted young man，a tendency toward the inner life，a critical view of the world，the presentation of an individual development，an individual’s confrontation with his environment，a self-formation according to internal purpose，a presentation of the universal within the process of a particular human life，etc.^[27] However，the uniqueness of the Jewish people endows its literature unique characteristics with its unique spatial experiences，which can not be ignored in growth either as a people or as an individual，nor in the presentation from the protagonist’s initiation into the society in the Bildungsroman.

For another，using spatial perspective to approach the subject’s growth in the 20^th Century American-Jewish Bildungsroman sheds a new light on the interpretation of bildung with the advantage of “spatial vision.” The process of the youth’s initiation into society is seen in general as a difficult and painful but colorful and meaningful process，which has been discussed in the dimension of time. It is also well known that bildung is always accompanied with recollections，and because of which the process of initiation becomes unforgettable. Memory is temporal but simultaneously spatial，for what makes the memory meaningful is just because it is locked stably in the space. David Harvey tells us the functions of space on memory in the initiation process through Bachelard’s works. “We think we know ourselves in time，” writes Bachelard，and “when we all know it is a sequence of fixations in the space of being’s stability.” Memories “are motionless，and the more securely they are fixed in space，the sounder they are.”^[28] So，it is not simply the case that all spaces participate in the subject’s growth，but only those in which the memories are eternally locked like home，ghetto for Jewish people，school，unban street and so on，which will be discussed in detail in Chapter Four.