With a scenario that could have been penned by Yiddish novelist, Isaac Bashevis Singer , a US academic has exposed the murder of unwanted Jewish babies in 19th century Vilna. Delegates at a conference entitled “Sex and the Shtetl,” heard about a court case in the city which divulged a Jewish baby-farming operation where single Jewish mothers acted as wet nurses for wealthier women while...
November 22, 2009 By ANNE MORRIS This ambitious anthology brings together 85 writings by American immigrants from 45 countries. Arranged chronologically, the letters, stories, articles and poems extend from 1623 to the present. The earliest ones, by Phyllis Wheatley, John James Audubon and St. John Crèvecoeur, often have a schoolbook feel, like a reading assignment for an American history class...
It took me a few weeks to read Blake Bailey’s exhaustive and exhausting (770 pages tip to tail) biography of John Cheever. Living with Cheever even for a month was no picnic: as his wife or children would tell you. He was a depressive, conflicted alcoholic, notably “enchained within the prison of self” even for a writer: when his children read some of the thousands of pages of his...
Roy Hodgson on managing levels of expectation at Fulham and his position as a potential successor to Fabio CapelloRoy Hodgson has just finished the Philip Roth novella Indignation , the title of which might describe the Premier League's favourite emotional state. Fulham's manager admits he can lose his rag with the best of them, but has 33 years of experience in club and international coaching to...
Knut Hamsun. Oh man. What can I say about Knut "Th'Newt" Hamsun? Closing in on nearly sixty years postmortem and he's probably still one of the most mind-pretzeling figures in literature to date. Hamsun walked a fine line between two strange worlds. On one hand he is hailed as a brilliant and beautiful author who believed in the mystical connection between man and nature, and understood the...
"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter." ~James Michener "The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say." ~Mark Twain "The wastebasket is a writer's best friend." ~Isaac Bashevis Singer "Read over your compositions,...
Some Differences between Muslims and Jews The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000 One Billion two hundred million) or 20% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes: Literature: 1988 - Najib Mahfooz Peace: 1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat 1990- Elias James Corey 1994 - Yaser Arafat: 1999 - Ahmed Zewai Economics: (zero) Physics: (zero) Medicine: 1960 -...
I see that over at the Sci-fi Wire , Paul Di Filippo is asking Why does the jury that awards the Nobel Prize for Literature hate us? By "us," I mean, of course, hardcore writers and partisans of fantastika, people unafraid and unashamed to boldly identify themselves primarily with the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror, rather than with mainstream, mimetic literature. I think I...
Not exactly being an iron clad champion of capitalism , I'm going to highlight our free bin today. The free bin is replenished every day with arm loads of miscellaneous junk that Green Apple just can't sell, and man we've got a lot of it. Over the last couple of years I've pulled out at least a full shelf of good books, sometimes damaged of course (missing covers, etc.) but always still functional...
From the last interview Larry Gelbart ever gave (to Vanity Fair's Mike Sacks): When you're writing and come to a rough spot and the ideas just aren't flowing, put down dummy text and keep on moving—especially if it's at the end of the day and you're going to stop. Your brain will never stop for the day, even if you have stopped working, and there's a very good chance you'll come up with something...
Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel laureate in literature who wrote in Yiddish, is my favorite author. In 1975, taking a break from my regular work as a journalist who specialized in business, I wrote profiles about him that were published in the New York Times Magazine and the now-defunct Harper's Bookletter. As I disclosed in my previous blog post, I am now preparing to move from my home in New Jersey,...
Though by no means boastful, Burt Britton used to describe himself as The World's Greatest Reader. Within reason, of course, His knowledge did not go back to Tertullian or Beaumont and Fletcher or even the Victorians. But when it came to 20th century literature the world over he was irrefutably omniscient. There are names of contemporary authors you could type into Google and probably get no response....
Corey Klemow sent me a link to an unpublished speech written by Larry Gelbart . I don't know if he saw this, but at the bottom of the page there's also a link to what's billed as Gelbart's Last In-Depth Interview . It's actually excerpted from a book about writers of humor that I've had requested from the library almost two months. As usual, excerpts follow; following the links is more than recommended....
The National Museum of American Jewish History, which will open in Philadelphia in November 2010, has announced the 18 distinguished Jewish Americans to be included in the Only in America Gallery/Hall of Fame. Selected by a public vote, the individuals who will be featured are: Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Louis Brandeis, Albert Einstein, Mordecai Kaplan, Sandy Koufax, Estée Lauder, Emma...
I've just been sitting here, listening to my iPod (I'm trying to listen to all 966 songs via shuffle before it runs out of battery, current song playing: "Losing Touch" by The Killers, song #71), and flipping through a phone book while I wait for someone to call me back. I noticed that, sprinkled throughout the yellow pages, are a bunch of random inspirational-type quotes. Like a Danish proverb...
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