Not a Simple Story

Book excerpt: Not a Simple Story presents the modern Hebrew writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon in a new light--as an artist cum thinker whose novels and short stories manifest a deep understanding of the social and political crisis at the heart of modern Jewish life. Based on a close reading of Agnon's seminal novel A Simple Story, the book argues that Agnon was essentially a Jewish nationalist and secular modernist whose critical portrait of modern Jewish life seeks not to demean Jews but to hold them to a higher standard. By demonstrating all that Jewish society lacks, Agnon implicitly shows what it needs for it to thrive--a return to such lost notions as Jewish self-respect, heroism, and romantic love. Sharon Green's scholarly critique of this modern Hebrew classic offers students of Jewish studies a unique opportunity to penetrate the literary enigma Agnon has represented for almost a century.