I'm glad to see, Elisa, that you understand how much reading it takes to know the first thing about the current state of Jewish-American fiction (this bodes well for you as a novelist). In addition to the group of contemporary writers you mention, an informed perspective on this topic requires some serious attention to critics who have understood, more or less, what's at stake in Jewish-American fiction: Irving Howe's various comments on the state of the art, as well as, of course, a heavy dose of Leslie Fiedler, would be a good place to start with that.

What depresses me is not that there's nothing to write about for contemporary Jewish writers; Dara Horn's a good example of how much there is out there that a smart author can put to use. My problem is that audiences and editors seem to be showing a marked preference for slick and silly crap over historically- and theoretically-grounded, intelligent fiction. More and more the money in Jewish literature seems to congregate far away from any sort of thoughtfulness or perspective. I'll admit that maybe this is just the same old pessimism that's always around in literary circles, but sometimes I can't help but feel it's getting worse. This week's embarassing example: Nextbook, probably the best funded (and often the most intelligent) Jewish publication on the market at the moment, can't even figure out whether the great A. M. Klein is a man or a woman (check their homepage, about halfway down in the digest section). To me, that's just pathetic.