“So I finished my tea and dabbled at my dinner, and took a bath, and retired with a book whose secrets were guarded by my exhaustion, for almost immediately it lay open beside me on the duvet, and I woke after a while to turn off the light, and succumbed back into a dream that must have lasted most of the rest of the night, of swirling snow past a speeding train, a sensation of being unable to understand anything close by, of everything immediate flying past in a frenzy too fleet for me to grasp, while the trees and houses guarding the horizon stayed sharp and clear and precise to the eye, so that there were in the world only two things I was certain of: the feel of your hair beneath my palm, and the horizon, as patient and gradual and slow to pass as a thing remembered, even as it melted into distance and stillness and white.” -- Russ Rymer, Paris Twilight
For the past three years, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts has been conducting a count of how many of the books reviewed by prominent publications were written by women and by men, and how many of the book reviews were assigned to female and male reviewers. The lopsided results have helped begin a conversation about gender bias in the literary world.
This past Wednesday, May 29, 2013, that conversation took the form of a panel discussion at the Center for Fiction in midtown Manhattan hosted by the National Book Critics Circlewhose annual meeting was held in the same building earlier that afternoon (and of which this examiner is a voting member). The panelists provided anecdotal accounts that support the findings of the Vida count: women authors are under-reviewed at major publications where women book critics are still a minority of book reviewers.
One of the panelists, New York Magazine's recently hired book critic Kathryn Schulz, did a count of her male predecessor Sam Anderson's book reviews and found that his reviews of books by male authors outnumbered his reviews by female authors 8 to 1. She then did a count of her own reviews and found that her ratio was 4 to 3, still favoring authors who are men.
Of the fifty or so book reviews this examiner has published (mainly on New York Journal of Books) books by men outnumber those by women 3 to 2. In my own defense I will point out that the few books I have panned and criticized most harshly have all been by men. Going forward I will make more of an effort to find women authors whose work I enjoy.
Overall there are a roughly equal number of books published by men and women authors, but the numbers vary by genre: male authors predominate in non-fiction, women authors predominate in children's literature and are also a majority of authors of poetry books, and the genders are about equal in adult fiction.
Another panelist, New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul, pointed out that when that publication wants to draw attention to a particular book and indicate its significance the review is always assigned to a reviewer whose gender is the opposite of the author.
The sole male panelist, Tin House editor and co-founder Rob Spillman, quoted statistics that show he takes the Vida count seriously and in the past three years has achieved gender parity among the authors reviewed by his magazine as well as among its reviewers. Unfortunately Tin House appears to be in the minority among periodicals that review books.
Mr. Spillman also noted that male writers handle rejection better than female writers. He said that even if encouraging words requesting a writer's next piece of writing are added to a rejection letter women writers will not submit to that publication again, whereas men will send in more work no matter how emphatic and negative the tone of the rejection letter.
Women authors and reviewers continue to face gender bias.
People of all ages enjoy fairytales and the folk tales. Helene Wecker's debut novel The Golem and the Jinni, published today by New York publisher HarperCollins, combines several fiction genres in a work that feels like a fairytale. In my New York Journal of books review of the novel I describe the book as "a fairy tale for grown ups that combines historical fiction and paranormal fantasy in a novel of ideas that is also a tearful love story and a suspenseful page-turner."
Cozy Little Book Journal
The folklore underlying the book is both Eastern European Jewish and Levantine Arab in origin. Jewish folk tales are fun reads, but in most of them you won't learn much about Judaism. The same is true of this novel. In interviews Ms. Wecker has admitted that her knowledge of Judaism is by and large limited to what she learned as a child in Hebrew school.
The first of the two title characters is created by a corrupt kabbalist. Here Ms. Wecker is taking poetic license. Traditional Judaism has its share of magic and superstition, but the magic is supposed to be white magic. In theory a corrupt kabbalist would be an ineffective one, since the efficacy of the magic depends on the purity of the practitioner's intent as well as on his or her strict ritual observance, but from a Jungian perspective we all have a shadow side to our psyches, and anyway, this is a book whose premise demands multiple suspensions of disbelief.
As in most love stories boy meets girl, they get to know each other noting similarities and differences, they break up, and a dramatic crisis reminds them of their feelings for each other and brings them back together. To find out how that basic scenario plays out in detail for the novel's supernatural title characters you'll have to read the book.
In addition to the title characters the book has a strong cast of supporting characters including the title characters' human mentors, protectors, and co-workers, and people in Eastern Europe and the Levant who figure in the backstories prior to the title characters' immigration to late 19th Century New York.
Ms. Wecker wrote The Golem and the Jinni as an attempt to combine the folklores of her Jewish ancestors and of her Arab-American husband's ancestors and to imagine a time and place where Jews and Arabs lived in peace as neighbors. But the historical reality in turn of the previous century New York was that the Jewish immigrants of the Lower East Side and the Arab immigrants of the Lower West Side rarely crossed paths. It is also worth noting that turn of the previous century Levantine Jewish immigrants chose to live among their European co-religionists on the Lower East Side rather than among their former neighbors from the old country in Little Syria.
In my New York Journal of Books review I recommend The Golem and the Jinni "to adults who enjoy a good story and have a childlike sense of make-believe." This novel would make a terrific HBO original series combining the supernatural elements of True Blood and Game of Thrones with the historical authenticity of Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood, John Adams,and Rome.
A.B. Yehoshua's new novel The Retrospectiveis a book I enjoyed reading while I was reading it but one that left me somewhat disappointed afterward. In my New York Journal of books review I explore the novel's multiple allegories and describe it as "a quick and easy read" despite its layers of meaning. My use of the phrase "quick and easy" may have something to do with the fact that I read The Retrospectiveshortly after reading William Gass' comparatively difficult novel Middle C. I actually prefer dense prose and more challenging use of language, but Mr. Yehoshua's naturalistic dialogue as well as his use of symbolism and allegory kept me engaged.
The Retrospective is an autobiographical novel in which cinema stands in for fiction and a film director represents the novelist. Indeed the director attends a retrospective of his early films and receives a prize in Santiago de Compostela, the same Spanish city where his author was awarded a literature prize. The novel's Hebrew title can be translated as Spanish Charity and its central image is Roman Charity, a story of a daughter who breast feeds her starving father depicted in numerous Renaissance paintings. Pardon the pun, but Mr. Yehoshua milks the image for all the symbolic and allegorical meaning it can yield. See my New York Journal of Books review for a fuller discussion of those allegories.
Jewish history has had many periods of persecution in which Jews have had to pretend to be gentiles, but very few in which it has been advantageous for gentiles to pass as Jews. Yet that latter scenario is the premise for William H. Gass’ Middle C, his first novel in eighteen years, which was published today by New York publisher Knopf.
As I describe in my New York Journal of Books review of Middle C, its protagonist’s father was an anti-Nazi Austrian who in 1938 had the family pretend to be Jewish so they could leave the country. Such a plot might have been more plausible had Mr. Gass set the book in the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s, but that would have required the family to ask permission to emigrate to Israel, and according to Gil Roth’s podcast-interview with Greg Gerke, who interviewed William Gass for the Winter 2012 issue of Tin House, Mr. Gass believes the State of Israel should never have been established.
According to the same podcast one of Mr. Gass’ favorite authors is William Gaddis, author of The Recognitions whose characters include an art forger and a currency counterfeiter.Middle C’s protagonist Joseph Skizzen fabricates credentials to become a professor of music history, just as his father had adopted a false religious and ethnic identity.
Though it’s not to his taste, Professor Skizzen chooses as his scholarly specialty the atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg (who converted to two different flavors of Christianity before returning to his native Judaism), because it intimidates his department colleagues. Professor Skizzen’s students nickname him Professor Digression, and the same applies to his author, though as I note in my NYJB review Mr. Gass’ narrative does achieve suspense.
Before becoming an academic Joseph holds less prestigious jobs, but it is not clear to this reader how long he stays at each one. His first job is in a music store during and after high school. Young Joey would have been a member of his high school’s class of 1956. Mr. Gass’ third person narrator notes that in Joseph’s small town in Ohio rap and hip hop recordings were not available (implying that they were available in larger cities), but Rapper’s Delight, the first widely distributed and commercially successful rap/hip hop recording, was released in 1979. Clearly Middle C’s eighty-eight year old author is more conversant with Twentieth Century classical music, and Professor Skizzen’s music history lectures, even with or indeed because of their digressions, are entertaining and informative.
In another digression Middle C’s third person narrator regrets that most American men have no more than six sex partners in a lifetime, but the book’s protagonist has no sex life and remains a virgin well into his thirties. Joseph Skizzen’s aversion to sex is a trait Umberto Ecco assigned to his villain/protagonist Simone Simonini in The Prague Cemetery. So is Joseph also an anti-Semite? In a conversation with his mother about food Joseph notes that Americans only eat the outside of an animal but not its internal organs. His mother points out that Jews eat liver, to which Joseph replies, “Jews aren’t Americans.”
In my NYJB review I recommend Middle C “to readers who enjoy prose gymnastics, postmodern fiction, and experimental juxtapositions of style and form.” See that review for a fuller discussion of Mr. Gass’ new novel.
Next month will mark the 40th anniversary of the publication of Cruelty, the first of eightbooks of poetry by the poet whose pen name and legal middle name was Ai and the third anniversary of her death from breast cancer at age 62. Today W.W. Norton is publishing all eight of her poetry books in one volume as The Collected Poems of Ai. In my review of the book in New York Journal of Books I note that at a time when most American poetry was autobiographical Ai wrote dramatic monologues in other people's voices.
New York Journal of Books
In his introduction to the book poet Yusef Komunyakaacompares Ai's dramatic approach to that of a method actor. Another analogy for the way Ai inhabited other people's voices and roles would be the one woman shows of Anna Deavere Smith.
Ai's poems are not to everyone's taste. If you prefer the Rolling Stones to the Beatles, Howling Wolf to Muddy Waters, the gritty realism (including graphic violence and strong sexual content) of HBO's Sunday night original series to PBS' British dramas you'll probably enjoy Ai's poetry; if not, stay with safer, tamer, less edgy poets. But even if you're fond of her poems you'll probably want to pace yourself at just a few at a time because of their frequent and brutal violence.
Ai is drawn to the shocking and perverse. She quotes the Rolling Stone's song "Gimme Shelter" in her poem"The Mortician's Twelve-Year-Old Son," a poem whose depiction of necrophilia one could imagine dramatized on HBO. In my NYJB review I quote "The Kid" as an example of graphic violence in Ai's work. In "Knockout" Mike Tyson’s rape of Desiree Washington is discussed by an inner city sex worker who has no empathy for Ms. Washington. In “Why Can’t I Leave You?” Ai addresses marriage and sexuality in the context of rural poverty from the wife's perspective.
Quite a few of Ai's poems are in the voices of villains. She lets the bad guy tell his side of the story and in so doing he incriminates himself. "The Good Shepherd: Atlanta, 1981" is in the voice of a serial killer (see video). In "Kristallnacht," a four part six and a half page poem, the speaker is a half French half German former Nazi collaborator. The poem's final couplet is haunting: "Pretend I died for nothing/instead of living for it."
In “Life Story,” another six and a half page poem, the speaker is a Roman Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse, and in “Family Portrait, 1960” the speaker is the poet’s step-father whom her bed-ridden mother asks to supervise eleven year old Florence and her seven year old half sister Roslynn as they shower instructing them to “scrub your little pussies.”
History is a recurring theme in Ai's work with poems in the voices of Leon Trotsky, J. Robert Oppenheim, Senator Joseph McCarthy, Jimmy Hoffa, J. Edgar Hoover, Fidel Castro, Presidents Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Clinton and George W. Bush, among others as well as lesser known figures. Ezra Pound defined an epic as a "poem including history." The Collected Poems of Ai is an everyman and woman's The Cantos for the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first Centuries.
The Jewish Book Council's 2012 book of the year is not one book but three: the three volume box set City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York published last September by New York University Press.
"You can show your support for the poet by emailing the embassy in Washington D.C. as we did, however, I believe the emails go unread. You can also call the embassy and leave a message at (202) 274-1600 (press 1 four times to leave a message with the ambassador’s office)."
The Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award are considered the triple crown of American book publishing. Although I am a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle I have not read any of these books (see my previous article 2012 Books Retrospective for the 2012 books I have read and reviewed). My own book reviewing schedule leaves me little time to read books that have already been published with my eyes, but I do have time to listen to audiobooks and will keep the above list for future reference.
“Why can’t I be an empty house falling into decay, unaware of myself? Why can’t I be the sky empty or the river flowing into the sea senselessly or an empty plate or knife or fork, whatever is but does not feel itself? If I were the grass that covers the graves I could forget being human. I want it taken away. The sun is sparkling on the waters. Why should I not be the sparkle rather than the eyes that show me the difference in myself. Shine upon me, sun, so that I become lit up like a sunbeam.”
Anyone who thinks congressional Republicans will roll over on the debt ceiling or gun control or other pending hot-button issues hasn’t been paying attention.
But the President can use certain tools that come with his office – responsibilities enshrined in the Constitution and in his capacity as the nation’s chief law-enforcer — to achieve some of his objectives.
I took this last year, but in retrospect, I think it’s my strongest piece from high school.
Working on this project really made me examine my own opinions, preconceptions and prejudices about “slutty” women and women who choose to cover all of their skin alike. I used to assume that all women who wore Hijabs were being oppressed, slut-shame, and look down on and judge any woman who didn’t express her sexuality in a way that I found appropriate.
Summaries of my 2012 NYJB book reviews and a plug for Tsipi Keller's novel "The Prophet of Tenth Street."
In the past year I published 14 book reviews on New York Journal of Books and synopses of those reviews with additional remarks here on examiner.com. I also wrote a review of a friend's novel that NYJB's ethics rules preclude me from publishing there and which I have been submitting to other literary publications for several months (which makes me appreciate having a regular venue for my reviews as a NYJB reviewer); I could have published it here, but the book in question,The Prophet of Tenth Street by Tsipi Keller, deserves to be reviewed in a less newsy, more literary and intellectually weighty publication, so for now I will continue sending it out.
Some of the books I read and reviewed this year were quite good, others were mixed, and not one was a complete waste of time. Here then in chronological order by date of publication are the fourteen books I read and reviewed for NYJB in 2012:
In Ben Marcus' dystopian fantasy The Flame Alphabet a language epidemic erupts among Jewish families; children's speech makes their parents deathly ill. Soon it spreads to the rest of the population, which in turn results in a level of anti-Semitism few Jewish-American readers have ever experienced. In my January 17, 2012 examiner.com article about the novel I wrote, "The ominous nature of the fictional events lends the narrative a sense of gravitas that Mr. Marcus' prose style is well equiped to express. While the book has all the necessary elements to make it a cult classic, a book this well written deserves the widest possible audience." Mr. Marcus' prose in this book is the handsomest of all the books I reviewed this year.
Stay Awake, Dan Chaon's book of short stories about traumatized midwesterners, andAssisted Living, Nikanor Teratologen's novel about a racist murderer/cannibal, child abuser, and avid reader in northern Sweden were published on the same day, February 7, 2012. I wrote separate reviews of the two books on NYJB but covered both books in one article here on examiner.com. In that article I cautioned my readers not to judge the characters inStay Awake who, as I wrote in my NYJB review, "lack the intellectual skills to thrive in our post-industrial/information age/digital economy, a handicap that increases the likelihood that they will find themselves in the path of life’s calamities and renders them less resilient and resourceful when disaster strikes." In my NYJB review of Assisted Living I wrote of the novel that "because it is so over the top and its horrors so exaggerated, readers who appreciate warped, gallows humor may find parts of it funny despite the pervasive evil."
In 2012 I only reviewed one book of poetry, Left-Handed: Poems by Jonathan Galassi, which describes the end of the author's decades long marriage and how a relationship with a younger man helped him acknowledge and accept his homosexuality. In my March 20, 2012 examiner.com article I quoted my NYJB review of the book in which I recommended it "to all poetry lovers and to all readers who find they must radically change their lives in order to live more authentically."
Istanbul Was a Fairytale by Jewish-Turkish writer Mario Levi is the longest, most difficult, challenging, at times frustrating but also the most rewarding book I read in 2012. In my NYJB review of the novel I recommend it "to readers who enjoy dense prose and have the uninterrupted leisure and focus its multipage paragraphs demand." Mr. Levi is a student of French literature and emulates such French writers as Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Marcel Proust. In my NYJB review I describe Istanbul Was a Fairytale as "an engaging, rewarding, and sometimes lyrical search for lost time." In that review I did not have space for a plot synopsis of this multi-generational family saga, but I did provide one in my May 29, 2012 examiner.com article about the novel.
My July 3, 2012 examiner.com article describes two novels about characters in career and life transitions. In Joe Meno's Office Girl the characters are fine-arts majors in their early to mid-twenties transitioning from college to establishing themselves as working artists. In this interim period they find themselves taking dull, dead-end jobs to make ends meet. In my New York Journal of Books review of the novel I compare it to Lena Dunham's HBO seriesGirls in that the characters are legally adults but are still growing up, and how their poor choices exacerbate their already modest and insecure circumstances. Gray Adams, Barbara Browning's male protagonist in I'm Trying to Reach You is a middle-aged dancer turned academic who is obsessed by the consecutive deaths in a period of months of great performing artists and by a series of home made YouTube videos featuring dance performances by Ms. Browning. In my NYJB review I recommend the novel "to anyone . . . who wants to experience a multimedia novel blurring genres and means of communication as well as the boundary between the author and her fictional narrative.”
In August I published NYJB reviews of three fiction books by the late Jewish-Serbian writerDanilo Kiš and four examiner.com articles about the books on the same day. The Attic andPsalm 44 are novellas Mr. Kiš wrote when he was 25 in 1960 and employ writing styles not found in his later work. The Attic is a lyrical and fanciful account of bohemian life in Belgrade in the 1950s. Psalm 44 takes place in Auschwitz and its characters are women prisoners. Mr. Kiš wrote it hastily to submit it to a contest and unfortunately it has a few glaring historical inaccuracies. The Lute and the Scars is a collection of short stories and one essay he wrote in the last decade of his life in the 1980s that show his mature writing style.
The Canvas is a psychological mystery by contemporary Jewish-German author Benjamin Stein (no relation to the American comedic actor, game show host, and conservative pundit). It has a unique structure: half way through the book the first of its two narratives ends, and to continue reading readers must turn the book upside down and start again at the other end. The book has two front covers, and readers can start with either one. In my examiner.com article about the book I complained that the publisher chose Yom Kippur as the publication date of this Jewish themed novel. In my New York Journal of books review I guardedly recommend The Canvas to Jewishly knowledgable fans of the psychological mystery genre.
Jamie Attenberg's novel The Middlesteins has gotten a lot of buzz in Jewish book circles since its publication in October. Its plot unfolds in Chicago's northern suburbs where a morbidly obese family matriarch's health is failing in the months leading up to her twin grandchildren's bnei mitzvah. I gave it a mixed review. In my NYJB review of the book I wrote, "the quality of its prose … is at best serviceable and at worst pedestrian…" In my examiner.com article I quoted that review: "stylistically The Middlesteins falls between two stools. Sophisticated readers who might otherwise appreciate its 'nonlinear structure, multiple perspectives, and occasional page-and-a-half long paragraphs' will find the quality of the writing disappointing, while its ambitious narrative form may intimidate unsophisticated readers who might nonetheless 'enjoy its recognizable characters described in a familiar, colloquial idiom.'"
Israeli writer Dror Burstein's novel Kin, which was published last month, portrays the inner life of an elderly widower and adoptive father who decides to find his adult son's biological parents and reunite him with them. In my New York Journal of Books review of Kin I describe it as "sad and beautiful" and "a nonlinear impressionistic series of vignettes, flashbacks, inner monologues and apocalyptic dystopian fantasies/dream sequences." Making sense of these varied elements is the reader's job; Mr. Burstein doesn't spoon feed, but this book is certainly worth the effort. My examiner.com article also compares and contrasts adoption practices in Israel and the United States. It might be helpful to readers searching for Kin in the Brooklyn Public Library catalog to know that that library spells the author's name Deror Burshṭain.
Merry Christmas to my Christian readers, and happy Chinese food and movie day to my Jewish ones! May 2013 bring as rewarding reads as 2012 did!
We, the undersigned, including poets, men and women writing, performing and reciting poetry in all corners of the world, urge the Secretary of State or Foreign Minister of our respective countries to appeal to the Qatari Court for the immediate release of our colleague, Qatari poet Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami, who after spending a year in solitary confinement, on November 29, 2012 was sentenced to life in prison by the Qatari courts.
Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami’s crime consisted of reciting on November 16, 2011 a poem extolling the courage and values of the popular uprisings in Tunisia, /Oh revolutionary, sing the praises of the struggle with the blood of the people/ in the soul of the free carve the values of revolt/ and to those holding the shroud of the dead tell/ that every victory also bears its ordeals/.
According to the poet's lawyer, Najib al-Nuaimi, the judge made the whole trial secret [..]"Muhammad was not allowed to defend himself, and I was not allowed to plead or defend in court. I told the judge that I need to defend my client in front of an open court, and he stopped me."
Rather than making itself an instrument for cracking down on dissent, we believe that the Court should uphold Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami’s right to free speech. In the tradition of speaking truth to power, following the footsteps of such great poets as Pablo Neruda, Majakovski, Nazim Hikmet, Mahmoud Darwish, Faraj Bayraqdar and innumerable others throughout the world today, such as Colombia’s poet Angye Gaona, Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami placed his poetic talent to the service of a movement for change. The poem he recited called for an end to intolerable conditions, a demand that for the past two years has been aired by millions throughout North Africa and the Arab world.
In this spirit, we poets and non-poets who perceive the need for worldwide change at the social, political and ecological level, call on the Court to review the appeal, stop siding with repression and lend its ear to the movements that have sprung up all over the world for dignity, social justice and freedom, virtues that poets all over the world are endeavoring to voice and deliver using the beauty and power of poetry.
Qatari Poet Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami has been sentenced to life in prison for the crime of reciting a poem. Help correct this injustice by signing the petition.
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We, the undersigned, including poets, men and women writing, performing and reciting poetry in all corners of the world, urge the Secretary of State or Foreign Minister of our respective countries to appeal to the Qatari Court for the immediate release of our colleague, Qatari poet Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami, who after spending a year in solitary confinement, on November 29, 2012 was sentenced to life in prison by the Qatari courts.
