Biur and I had a short honeymoon. He said some smart things about Slifkin. I said some smart things about Slifkin, and a manly handshake folowed in one of our comment sections.
But that's off. Today, having not read one word of the authors under discussion, he writes:
Any "good" work of literature says something about the world beyond the particular characters and plot. A novel is large enough to portray the complexities of characters and the societies they live in.
Wrong. Literature is art, and art is never about the "message." Mirvis, Englander, et al, aren't ambassadors. They don't write for the purpose of teaching some yokels in Iowa what it "really" means to be Jewish.
They don't write essays. They don't write propoganda. They aren't bloggers. They are story-tellers. Let them tell their stories, and judge their stories as art. Not as arguments.
Another point: When you read fiction - when you read anything - all you get are small pieces of the puzzle. It's up to the reader to put it together. No writer, expecially no writer of fiction, pretends to be giving you the whole picture. All you get it the small piece the writer chooses to focus on at one moment in time, from the perspective of where he is intellectually and emotionally, at one moment in time. No novel - indeed no person - is large enough to contain the whole of human complexities, or the complexities of their societies. It's too much, and we're too small.
But grown ups know that.