SOURCE: Charyn, Jerome. “Inside the Hornet's Head.” Midstream 49, no. 6 (September-October 2003): 17-22.

In the following essay, Charyn states that the lasting legacy of The Adventures of Augie March is the novel's profound influence on generations of Jewish American writers and readers.

1.

I did not stumble upon [The Adventures of Augie March] lightly. I gave it as a gift to the most beautiful girl in my high school class, Valerie K. Hadn't it won awards? And wasn't it about a Jewish bumpkin like myself? (So I'd heard secondhand). I meant the book to bring me closer to Valerie, but it never did. And then, a year or two later, I actually read it and was overwhelmed by its bounty. It was a book that never stopped to breathe, and I was breathless in its wake. Leslie Fiedler calls it “unlike anything else in English except Moby Dick.” It had the...