Books

Paging the Good Doctor(s)

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SPEAKING VOLUMES The older I get, the more difficult it is for me to imagine what my father's young life, especially his most formative years, was like. What I know of him is like a faint outline: He was American-born, the oldest of three children, and his parents were both Russian immigrants who met here. Raised in South Philadelphia, it...

Books

The Lost Ones

Whatever happened to other works from two great masters?

By:

Robert Leiter

SPEAKING VOLUMES The history of 20th-century literature is littered with famous writer's blocks. Two of the most documented and analyzed were suffered by a Jewish American, Henry Roth, and an African-American, Ralph Ellison. Both novelists wrote a single -- and singular -- work, and then seemingly fell silent. With Roth, the first work was Call It Sleep , which has...

Books

Pas de Deux

How the French got in step with the Nazis during World War II

By:

Robert Leiter

SPEAKING VOLUMES Until the release of Marcel Ophuls' four-hour documentary The Sorrow and the Pity in 1971, the conventional wisdom about France during World War II was that it may have been a country swiftly defeated by the Nazis, then brutally occupied, but no matter what, it never grew complaisant -- nor did it ever misunderstand its true mission under...

Books

Listen to Him a Little

Songwriter supplies his lyrics, plus thoughts on what swayed him melodically

By:

Robert Leiter

SPEAKING VOLUMES I have no objectivity when it comes to Finishing the Hat , Stephen Sondheim's collected lyrics covering the years 1954-1981, recently published by Alfred A. Knopf. How could I, when the musicals discussed in these pages, beginning with Gypsy , which I saw during its Philadelphia tryout in 1959, have made up some of the most memorable moments...

Books

'Nothing Else Can Lift Me Up'

Nat Hentoff dissects and praises the healing -- and unifying -- power of jazz

By:

Robert Leiter

SPEAKING VOLUMES In the introduction to At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene , published by University of California Press, Nat Hentoff, who worked for The Village Voice for decades before being rudely dismissed in 2008, described how as an 11-year-old, he heard some Artie Shaw music emanating from a Boston record shop and was changed...