In Textual Silence, literary scholar Jessica Lang asserts that language itself forms barriers between the author and the reader in Holocaust texts—and that these barriers, or silences, are not a lack of substance, but an essential characteristic of the genre.

Zusammenfassung
In Textual Silence, literary scholar Jessica Lang asserts that language itself forms barriers between the author and the reader in Holocaust textsâand that these barriers, or silences, are not a lack of substance, but an essential characteristic of the genre. Â Â

Inhalt

Introduction 1
1 Readability and Unreadability: A Fractured Dialogue 9

Part I
Generational Differences in Holocaust Literature
2 Before, During, and After: Reading and the Eyewitness 35
3 Reading to Belong: Second-Generation and the Audience of Self 58
4 The Third Generation’s Holocaust: The Story of Time and Place 87

Part II
Pushed to the Edges: The Holocaust in American Fiction
5 American Fiction and the Act of Genocide 119
6 Receding into the Distance: The Holocaust as Background 155
Afterword: Reading the Fragments of Memory 175

Acknowledgments 179
Notes 181
Bibliography 199
Index 209