Josh Lambert’s The Literary Mafia is a brave book. For a Jewish Studies scholar to tackle head-on the antisemitic idea that there’s a cabal of Jews controlling the puppet strings of US publishing requires moxie squared. Lambert refuses to simplify his argument but manages the complexity of his case with quick-moving prose that keeps the reader interested in the whole story.
But let me back up and, in the spirit of the acknowledgments to The Literary Mafia—which, by the way, you should read first—announce that I do not know Lambert very well. (He gave a lecture at the University of Illinois, where I am based, but I was unable to attend.) At a conference I saw him give an impressive talk about Philip Roth. The paper focused on the Roth archives at the Library of Congress, and at the end Lambert suggested, almost in passing, that someone should take...
