Wallant, Edward Lewis (Vol. 5) - Wallant, Edward Lewis 1926–1962
Wallant, Edward Lewis 1926–1962
Wallant, an American novelist, was the author of The Pawnbroker. His protagonists are Jewish-Americans immersed in anguish; his settings, harshly urban; his message, optimistic. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 1-4, rev. ed.)
Edward Lewis Wallant … can be considered "minor" only in terms of what he might have done had he lived beyond the age of thirty-six. I shall not be surprised if future critics award him a high place in our literature on the basis of the four novels he did complete; but in the meantime his inclusion in a volume devoted to minor figures is justified by the fact that he is almost unknown to the public. (p. 118)
It is … the sudden hunger to know what lies in the hearts of others … that is at the center of Wallant's fiction; or rather, as the theme characteristically appears in a framework of exhortation, the absolute obligation of all men to acknowledge this hunger,...
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