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The inclusion of works in a canonical list creates a large body of exclusions. But among these neglected works there are not a few that nevertheless are worth reading. Literary worth is not necessarily aesthetic impeccability. A literary work recommends itself by a high degree of artistic achievement with elbowroom for historical importance. The present study focuses on Leo Rosten´s immigration novel The Education of Hyman Kaplan (1937) and Archibald MacLeish´s radio play Air Raid (1938). The first is more than the apparent compendium of language-based jokes. Read in the context of immigration policy from Presidents Theodore Roosevelt to F. D. Roosevelt and of Jewish-American humor, it displays Kaplan´s moral and intellectual growth, which extant commentary denies, and exhibits the "interior internationality" of an immigration country. Air Raid is one of the few achieved American radio plays to take a stand on foreign affairs in a context that does not only consist of broadcasting and Picasso´s collage-painting Guernica "the screaming picture" which MacLeish transposed into the acoustic medium but also of the historical saturation bombing of the Basque town.
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Keywords
- American literature
- American Studies
- Amerikanistik
- Bombing of Guernica
- Canon (Literature)
- Classic fiction (pre c 1945)
- Condor Legion
- Fiction & related items
- History and criticism
- Language
- Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers
- Literary studies: plays & playwrights
- Literature & literary studies
- Literature: history & criticism
- Mr. Kaplan