Dorothy Parker - Cute, Jewish Word from: Mordy

Though I distinctly remember asking for the position of "Repository of Parkeresque Witticisms," apparently the large quantities of alcohol manipulated my tongue because the official board positions for the Dorothy Parker Society of New York were released today and I am merely "Vice President of Parkeresque Writing." Charlotte, another of our bloggers, was dubbed "Secretary of Poetry," though I am unsure if her job refers to the inscribing of Parker's poetry, a feat not required since Parker's death in 1967.

Dorothy Parker, drinker, wit, writer for the New Yorker, etc, once said about herself, "I was just a little Jewish girl trying to be cute." Now I feel like I should've asked to be liaison to the Orthodox Jewish community. The L ran a story about the Dorothy Parker yahrzeit that the couple of us attended earlier this month.

The Pleasures of Literary Gossip Word from: Jake

I'm planning to leave the area of celebrity gossip to my esteemed "redheaded, foulmouthed feminist" colleague, but this time, I just couldn't refrain. A friend and I were having lunch the other day; he was contemplating a high-profile Jewish reading and hunting for ideas. I suggested Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss ("the golden literary couple") together: delicious, right? So he contacted Jonathan, who himself agreed to come, but said that "he and Nicole don't do readings together." Very wise, no? They're trying to avoid the hype, I guess, or not get on each other's literary nerves and egos. Marriages of writers are notoriously fragile and dramatic, forget the Hollywood ditzes - how about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes? Sheesh. There's an interesting review of Nicole's History of Love on the Village Voice site, and it's got some shmaltz about her and Jonathan, as well (who is Rachel Aviv the reviewer by the way? We should invite her over here). I'm going to write something about Nicole's fantastic, gorgeous book some time soon. We can have a little fight about who is the better writer out of the two.

Photo Credits: Grant Delin, Laura Buchwald

Mmmm. Mima'amakim blog. Wake up and smell the tokenism.

The boys who run this site have to get credit where it's due. Somehow, they allowed- nay, invited- a redheaded, foulmouthed feminist (and here's the clincher) Reform Jewess from North Carolina write for this blog. I also am not Jewish, depending who you ask, since my father's the one with the Semite cred. Thought it was best to get that out on the table.

But that's the point of this whole website. Voices. Creativity. Expression. A few weeks ago I was interviewing for a job and it just so happened that the owner of the company was Jewish, albeit a lot more conservative than me (dude, I have Heeb magazine on my resume). She asked me how I would feel if conversation in the office got political, since her views- and those of most of her coworkers- is more right wing.

"That's the whole point of debate, isn't it?" I said. "If I just wanted a bunch of people who agreed with me, I have friends for that."

Long story short, I got offered the job. So chalk another one up to free speech.

Sanatorium pod Klepsydra Word from: Mordy

"People gather in the market square, silent under the enormous cupola of light, and group themselves without thinking into a great, immobile finale, a concentrated scene of waiting; the clouds billow in ever deepening pinks; in all eyes there is calm and the reflection of luminous distances."

The quote is from Bruno Schulz's Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, which besides being one of the coolest titles for a book ever, also ranks as one of the most gorgeous contributions from Jewish-Polish literature (name another, I dare you). It's also the book that inspired Cracow Klezmer Band's new avant-klezmer album, of the same title.

But doesn't the quote above lend itself to a different cultural paradigm? Not to drag two fine works of art into the realm of pop-culture, but Spielberg's War of the Worlds just came out, and the Village Voice gave it a hot review. Michael Atkinson speaks about its allusions to September 11th, with its burning skies, missing people posters, etc. The best descriptions in Schulz's book conjures up those apocalyptic visions almost effortlessly.

"A frightened, yellow, foredoomed glare shone from these streaks across half the sky; the curtain was falling quickly. The pale roofs of houses shone with a moist reflection; it was getting dark and the gutter pipes were beginning to sing in monotone."

Sanatorium was first published in Poland in 1937. That predates Spielberg's apocalypse by almost 70 years.

Sketchbook: Cities of Belief Word from: Shlomo

I have a large quantity of unfinished and unpolished sketches, which I will be displaying. This one deals with an idea that has been swimming around in my head for a while. I wanted to play around with the idea of the assumptions behind our systems of belief and discourses. Here I used the image of the city with foundations, that sometimes seem robust, and other times seem ephemeral. The drawings on the right even show cities growing out of other cities. In other sketches I've tried to use abstract grids. Basically, I'm working through both the metaphors and aesthetic concerns, ie. how to make this something I and others want to look at.

Some artists who I've been drawing inspiration from for these sketches are Saul Steinberg and Richard Hahn.

Memorial Gathering for Gershon Jacobson Word from: Mordy

A memorial gathering is being held in honor of Gershon Jacobson, founder and chief editor of the Algemeiner Journal, this Tuesday (June 28th). Elie Wiesel and Norman Lamm will be speaking. The event comes 30 days after Jacobson's death, and marks the traditional shloshim period of mourning.

The Forward sent me down to Crown Heights last week to cover a rally protesting the withdrawal from Gush Katif. Overall it was a small, boring affair, and I spent most of the evening making small talk with the crew from Ma'ariv. I did bump into Yossi Jacobson, Gershon's son, who I studied under for about a year. The newspaper, for whom I wrote for a couple months while I lived in Crown Heights, is apparently in flux. I've been told it hasn't been profitable in awhile, and there are questions as to what form it's now going to take.

The Algemeiner Journal bills itself as the largest weekly Yiddish newspaper. I remember a sign in the Algemeiner's office that quoted I.B. Singer, "Yiddish may be a dying language, but in the Yiddish tradition, from dying to dead is a long long way."

Robert Alter's New Book Word from: Jake

Robert Alter!! I remember sitting around in Cafe Vivaldi on Jones street, reading The Art of Biblical Narrative for the first time. I was melting, sweating, smoking, simply not believing that a book of literary criticism could be consuming me as intensely as any novel. That was an amazing read. Alter is one of the main influences in the field of literary readings of the Tanach. But then Neccessary Angels was about the Jewish modernity via Benjamin, Kafka and Sholem - also, absolutely grand. He teaches Hebrew and Comparative Lit at Berkeley. Not a hippie. Not a high-strung academic either - his stuff is highly accessable. I just saw the Times review of his newest upcoming book, Imagined Cities. Probably going to skip this one: heard more than ever wanted about the cities shaping imagination of the writers, and writers shaping readers' perception of these cities, blah blah. I'm sure it's fabulous though - if any of you get to it, please let me know how you liked it.