TWO TRANSATLANTIC WORKS ON AMERICAN LITERATURE

Jerzy Durczak belongs to a loosely-knit school of bright young Polish intellectuals who are hard at work reexamining fictional and non-fictional canons in the United States from a transatlantic perspective. In Selves Between Cultures, published in Poland but written in English, Durczak investigates the autobiographical texts of six American bicultural writers: Vladimir Nabokov, Alfred Kazin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Rodriguez, Ihab Hassan, and Ewa Hoffman, a fellow Pole who emigrated from Cracow at the age of thirteen. Durczak's close readings of the works of these authors suggests that significant changes have occurred in the field of American ethnic autobiography in recent years, changes which demand fresh hermeneutical and historical approaches from a new generation of scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. Durczak does a valuable service by punching holes in such traditional, stereotypical views of American bicultural writing as William Boelhower's: