Jay Cantor

Jay Cantor (born 1948 New York City) is an American novelist, and essayist.^[1]

He graduated from Harvard University with a BA, and from University of California, Santa Cruz with a Ph.D. He teaches at Tufts University.^[2] He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, Melinda Marble, and their daughter, Grace.^[3]

His work appeared in The Harvard Crimson.^[4] He was on the 2009 ArtScience Competition jury.^[5]

Awards

• 1989 MacArthur Fellows Program

Works

Novels

• The Death of Che Guevara, Knopf, 1983, ISBN 978-0-394-51767-4
• Krazy Kat: a novel in five panels, Knopf, 1988, ISBN 978-0-394-55025-1
• Great Neck: a novel, Knopf, 2003, ISBN 978-0-375-41394-0^[6]
• Forgiving the Angel: Four Stories for Franz Kafka, Knopf, 2014, ISBN 978-0385350341

Essays

• The Space Between: Literature and Politics, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982, ISBN 978-0-8018-2672-6
• On Giving Birth to One’s Own Mother. Knopf, 1991, ISBN 978-0-394-58752-3

Reviews

To call Jay Cantor the thinking man's Tom Wolfe is a little unfair to Tom Wolfe, who surely believes, and with some justification, that he's the thinking man's Tom Wolfe. It's also a little unfair to Jay Cantor, who for all I know abhors Wolfe's politics and his fiction as well. Yet the scope of Cantor's ambition in his teeming new novel, Great Neck; his avid desire to capture the American scene entire; his crowd of characters, each absorbed in a private drama; certain thrillingly compact episodes that stand out like a prodigy among dull schoolkids; the hankering after abandoned tradition (Cantor is fascinated by the cabala, Wolfe by the Stoics); the stern morality operating just below the surface of the narrative -- all these things, it seems to me, link these two writers, both of whom ardently believe in the power of fiction to bring an American moment to life.^[7]

References

1. George Herriman's. "Jay Cantor Biography - (1948– ), The Death of Che Guevara, Krazy Kat, The Space Between: Literature and Politics - University, Literature, and Essays - JRank Articles". Jrank.org. Retrieved 2012-09-27.
2. "Tufts University: English Department". Ase.tufts.edu. Retrieved 2012-09-27.
3. "Jay Cantor Author Bookshelf - Random House - Books - Audiobooks - Ebooks". Random House. Retrieved 2012-09-27.
4. Cantor, Jay. "Jay Cantor | Writer Profile | The Harvard Crimson". Thecrimson.com. Retrieved 2012-09-27.
5. Archived April 16, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.
6. Cantor, Jay (2004-08-10). "Random House, Inc. Academic Resources | Great Neck by Jay Cantor". Randomhouse.com. Retrieved 2012-09-27.
7. "To Know Which Way the Wind Blows", The New York Times, Adam Begley, February 2, 2003

External links

• "Jay Cantor talks about food", Cantabrigia
• "An Interview with Jay Cantor", Ken Capobianco and Jay Cantor, Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Summer, 1990), pp. 3–11
• "Jay Cantor. Great Neck. (Book Review)", The Review of Contemporary Fiction, June 22, 2003, James Crossley