Out of respect for Wiesel's anguished past and his dedication to human rights issues, literary critics temper reviews with a gentled, but pointed rebuttal. In private, their anonymous sneers ring with the intellectual's cynicism. Against the deluge of popular response, their quarrel with Wiesel's lengthy canon is the repetition of Holocaust themes, especially the guilt that the survivor feels for remaining alive through the whims of fate while more pious or scholarly victims died. Some critics denounce Wiesel's obsession with genocide and his belief that God abandoned Jews, who consider themselves a chosen race:
-
In 1987, Lawrence L. Langer of the Washington Post commented wryly that Wiesel claimed to be finished with the Holocaust, but "the Holocaust has not yet finished with him." Langer added that the author "returns compulsively to the ruins of the Holocaust world."
-
Martin Peretz, editor of The New Republic, considers Wiesel a public joke and a misapplication of the dignified Nobel Peace Prize.
-
New York Times reviewer Edward Grossman has accused Wiesel of pursuing a "forced march from despair to affirmation."
-
Irving Howe declares in The New Republic that Wiesel is a publicity seeker; Alfred Kazin augments the charge with claims that the famed death camp survivor is both shallow and self-aggrandizing.
-
Jeffrey Burke of the New York Times Book Review carries denunciation to greater extremes by lambasting Wiesel for redundancy and purple prose. Such strong dissent impels Wiesel to unburden his conscience and to master the same objectivity in memoir that he demands of his newspaper reportage.
