Posted on October 8, 2022

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Is it possible that a 20th-century Jewish N.Y. clique decided for decades what would be published in America? Josh Lambert, author of a book on the subject, offers some insight

More than 50 years after his death, Jack Kerouac, the man who wrote the iconic novel “On the Road,” is still considered one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, and one of the most outstanding voices of the Beat Generation. But it turns out that not everyone thought so at the time, according to him. “He would rant for hours about the Jewish literary mafia that he believed had placed a moratorium on publication of his work,” writer Jack McClintock said in a profile of Kerouac in Esquire Magazine, after Kerouac’s death in 1969.

Kerouac wasn’t the only one who harbored such opinions. Katherine Anne Porter, whose “Ship of Fools” was the best seller of 1962 (and became a successful film directed by Stanley Kramer), was sure she knew what the obstacles were on her road to fame.

‘as opposed to the film and music industry, where the successful Jews did not come from wealthy families, in the realm of literature these were Jews from wealthy families’

Author Josh Lambert: ‘When we look at Kerouac, it’s hard to think in antisemitic terms about someone whose greatest creative partner was Allen Ginsberg.

In a 1965 interview in Harper’s Bazaar Magazine, Porter, who was born in Texas, complained about what she saw as the source of discrimination against writers like her, who hailed from the southern and western United States. According to Porter, it was a clique that spoke a “curious kind of argot, more or less originating in New York, a deadly mixture of academic, guttersnipe, gangster, fake-Yiddish, and dull old worn-out dirty words.”

Truman Capote, arguably the most successful and talked-about writer of his generation, was sure enough of his status to declare outright what others only whispered. In a 1965 interview in Playboy, he attacked what he called the “Jewish literary mafia,” which he defined as a group of writers and critics from New York who dominated the country’s literary and publishing worlds, and could “make or break” car

Capote also cited a number of writers whom he said had been slighted: “The odds are you haven’t heard of most of them, for the simple reason that the Jewish Mafia has systematically frozen them out of the literary scene,” including John Knowles, Donald Windham and John Hawkes.

In fact this was apparently such a common accusation regarding America’s mid-20th century literary scene that some Jewish writers even subscribed to it. One example is Meyer Levin, author of the 1956 novel “Compulsion,” which was made into a film. Levin, who was born in Chicago, visited Israel more than once and wrote about Jewish subjects and the Holocaust. In 1972, he bought a half-page ad in The New York Times asking (in all caps): “Can a literary mafia affect your choice of books?” He described how he was also a victim of the same clique, which blocked publication of reviews of his new books because he was ostensibly the wrong kind of Jew – or as he put it, he was “too Jewish” and “too nationalist.”

Frustration and despair

“The claim about a Jewish mafia in the 1960s and ‘70s was very common and quite a few American editors and writers talked about it and complained about it,” says Josh Lambert, head of Jewish studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and author of a new book entitled “The Literary Mafia: Jews Publishing, and Postwar American Literature” (Yale University Press).

Asked to explain the claim, with its rather powerful antisemitic odor, that Jews decided what would and would not be printed and published during those years, Prof. Lambert says: “There’s no doubt that these claims clearly play on antisemitic strings, but there’s more an expression of frustration, of despair – the feeling that anyone feels who is sure that something unfair is preventing them from getting promoted at work, that other people are moving ahead at their expense because of connections or because of their parentage.

‘In those years you could see Jewish solidarity in the literary world, but it didn’t work in a complex way’

“When we look at Kerouac, on the one hand, it’s hard to think in antisemitic termsabout someone whose greatest creative partner was Allen Ginsberg, who was Jewish. On the other hand, when we take into account the time and place where he [Kerouac] grew up, there’s no doubt he was exposed to quite a few antisemitic ideas that were common in those days in the United States. In contrast, when I read the quotes of Katherine Anne Porter, it already clearly sounds like antisemitism.”

Although Lambert acknowledges Kerouac’s and Capote’s feelings of frustration in the face of the apparent dominance of Jewish figures in the literary realm, it’s important to him to show in his book the baseless nature of the concept of a “Jewish mafia” per se – that is, in the sense of a powerful, organized body working in concert, whose members sit behind closed doors and decide who gets exposure and who stays in the shadows.

Instead, he refers to a “literature liberation movement” of Jewish editors, critics, authors and publishers, who in the middle of the last century enjoyed unprecedented prosperity after many years of institutionalized discrimination that blocked their way to most of the important jobs in their world. This movement was characterized by social solidarity and its members studied with the same Jewish scholars and thinkers, and often saw the world through those same literary glasses.

“In those years you could see Jewish solidarity in the literary world, but it didn’t work in a complex way,” Lambert explains. “For example, take Harold Strauss, editor in chief of Knopf [from 1942 to 1966]. In his case, Jewish solidarity was expressed in the fact that he had no interest in publishing literary material about the experiences of Yiddish-speaking Jews of the middle and lower classes, who were identified with the left.

“When he received an anthology of articles about the lives of Jews in various U.S. states, even when his editors tried to persuade him to publish it, he refused, saying: ‘The experience of Jews is only interesting when it come to the Holocaust, antisemitism or Israel. Nobody cares about the lives of Jews in the United States.’ There’s a senior editor who expresses a clear idea about what an interesting Jewish identity is and is not. The Jewish editors and authors at that time may not always have agreed with each other on everything, but to a great extent the story shows the strong connection they had with each other.”

According to Lambert, the great influence enjoyed by the Jews in the literary arena followed years of suffering blatant discrimination. “During the first decade of the 20th century it was impossible for a Jewish person, regardless of his talent, to be hired by a major publisher, appointed to an editorial position in an important literary magazine or be appointed a professor in an English department in a prestigious university,” he writes.

But Jews, Lambert stresses, were not the only victims of discrimination. “Until the late 19th century, other non-Christians were also excluded from teaching positions at American universities,” he notes.

That trend began to change in the early 20th century, with the advent of books released by Jewish publishers, who had by then established several of the publishing houses that continue to this day to be the biggest and most prestigious in America. Indeed, that was the case with Alfred Knopf, who in 1915 founded his eponymous publishing company. Two years later it was Albert Boni and Horace Liveright, who established their own publishing house, Boni & Liveright, considered one of the largest in the United States at the time. Simon & Schuster was established in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster, and Random House was founded two years later by Bennett Cerf, who was also Jewish.

‘Renewed discussion’ 

A similar phenomenon took place in the world of journalism. It began in 1896, when Adolph Ochs, who was Jewish, purchased The New York Times. One after another Jews were appointed as senior editors and reviewers on several of the most highly regarded publications in the United States. Daniel Bell was appointed editor of Fortune magazine, Irving Howe became the literary critic of Time magazine, and in 1963 two Jews, Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein, founded the highly regarded The New York Review of Books.

When you talk about Jews who for years were barred from the literary world and afterward founded their own publishing companies, that’s reminiscent of a parallel situation of Jews who established hospitals or banks for the same reasons. 

Lambert: “That’s an interesting comparison, but there’s one difference – namely, that the Jews who founded Mount Sinai Hospital or Goldman Sachs did so with the assumption that these were institutions designed to serve a Jewish population, even if later on they began to serve everyone. On the other hand, the Jews who founded Random House, Simon & Schuster or Knopf deliberately took steps to establish a publishing house that would include everyone and not only Jewish writers.”

For years it was claimed that Hollywood was an industry controlled by Jews. 

“It’s very sad that there are still so many people who believe in antisemitic ideas of that sort, but the good thing is that in recent years there’s been a renewed discussion of the Jewish experience in Hollywood, including the issue of the role played by the American film industry during World War II. When we refer to the literary world, to Hollywood and to the music industry, for example, what we see repeatedly is that whenever an opportunity was created and a new market opened up without preconditions that restricted the Jews, the Jews took advantage of the opportunity, while taking great risks.

“That happened when comics became popular, or when the first movie theaters opened. On the other hand, as opposed to the film and music industry, where the successful Jews did not come from wealthy families, in the realm of literature these were Jews from wealthy families who attended the best universities in the United States and used the family money to establish publishing companies.”

If they had so much money, they could have invested in railways or coal mines. Why did they choose books of all things? 

“In every group there are people who love literature and art and people who don’t, like quite of few of their friends who came from the same background and had no interest in the literary world. As I understand it, these were Jews who wanted to take advantage of the literary world to achieve social status. People who encountered a situation in which high society was often closed to them due to restrictions on Jewish membership in all kind of social clubs. For them, the publishing house was an opportunity to achieve the same prestige by connecting to some of the most influential writers and editors.”

And the fact is that several of the greatest writers in mid-20th century United States were Jews, including Isaac Bashevis Singer and Philip Roth. For their part, Capote and his friends considered Roth to be the embodiment of the exaggerated power and influence of the Jewish mafia. Their grievances reached a peak in 1960, when Roth won the National Book Award for “Goodbye Columbus,” which includes a novella and five short stories. Roth was 27 years old at the time, the youngest-ever recipient. What exacerbated the situation was the fact that a year earlier, another Jewish writer, Bernard Malamud, won the prestigious award for his short story collection “The Magic Barrel.” There were apparently many people who believed that it was not at all a coincidence that the two Jews had won the award.

“The question that arises in the context of those who attacked the Jewish literary mafia,” Lambert writes, “is whether Jewish editors, writers and literary critics are the ones responsible for choosing the award winner. If so, that could support the claim that there really was a Jewish literary mafia operating at the time.”

But reality presented a different picture, he notes: “Only one Jewish critic, Alfred Kazin, was a member of the committee that chose Malamud for the award, while in Roth’s case there wasn’t a single Jewish member on the selection committee.”

So how do you explain their choice? 

“What’s particularly amazing in this story is that usually, when it comes to awards of this magnitude, they vary the winners and don’t give the award year after year to writers whose works and background are similar. Whereas here there’s a committee that grants the award two years in a row to Jewish writers who wrote short story collections that clearly deal with the Jewish experience.”

Maybe that testifies to the power of Jews as consumers of books, which leads to the desire of the committee members to cater to their taste? 

“I believe that there’s a combination of several factors here. The fact that these were collections of stories of rare quality was not a deterrent of course. In addition, it happened 15 years after the Holocaust, a moment in American culture when it was considered chutzpah to claim that the awards shouldn’t be given to a Jewish writer because another Jew won a year earlier.

“I believe that in every period of American culture there’s a wave of stories that everyone wants to tell, and that there’s excitement. At that moment in the culture, 15 years after the end of World War II, many people felt that there was something fascinating about those Jewish stories.”

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