Books

'An Obvious and Exemplary Victim'

By:

The title is a shocker: A Jew Must Die. When the book first appeared in the mails, I thought that the small-scale paperback -- so different in shape and design than most books I usually receive -- might be some anti-Semitic tract, and that the title had been chosen to be purposefully scandalous, and to frighten and provoke. But the...

Books

A Certain 'Patois'

By:

Robert Leiter

SPEAKING VOLUMES In the long relationship that Jews have had with the comic strip and its cousin, the comic book, Milt Gross stands as the missing link between the first and second halves of the 20th century. That's part of the thesis expounded in Is Diss a System?: A Milt Gross Comic Reader , edited and introduced by scholar Avi...

Books

'Hunting the Snark'

By:

Robert Leiter

SPEAKING VOLUMES "This is an essay about a strain of nasty, knowing abuse spreading like pinkeye through the national conversation -- a tone of snarking insult provoked and encouraged by the new hybrid world of print, television, radio and the Internet. It's an essay about style and also, I suppose, grace. Anyone who speaks of grace -- so spiritual a...

Books

Other Kinds of Relationships

By:

Robert Leiter

The New Yorker cartoon has possibly spawned more discussion than even the magazine itself, among both passionate devotees and critics of the form. For the first 50 of the publication's 85 years to date, its cartoons held mostly to a one-panel shape with a single caption or punch line running beneath the visual. The dominant tone over those five decades...

Books

Music to Their Ears

A collection of essays to tickle the fancy of the literary-minded

By:

Robert Leiter

Let's face it: The literary essay hasn't much currency left these days in the artistic marketplace. The critical review -- a journalistic staple for many decades -- has managed to keep its footing somewhat, even though its existence was threatened recently when certain papers decided to downsize. The review has survived a bit longer than the essay, its "loftier" relative,...