Books

'The Black Cloud of the Holocaust'

Lesser-known author packs a punch in short form

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Reputation in the arts is fickle, filled with mystery. Why is it that some writers have reputations beyond their capacities, and keep them despite the less than commendable works they publish? On the other hand, why is it that certain good writers, who entertain and enlighten audiences throughout long careers, lose their reputations the minute they die and are then...

Books

Yet Another 'Best of' List, This Time Dealing With American Lit

By:

Aaron Passman, JE Feture

Jews have been churning out great books for thousands of years, going all the way back to the original best seller, the Five Books of Moses. And, particularly in more recent times, Jewish writers have mined the American experience to produce some of the more memorable novels available in English. With that in mind, Josh Lambert has written American Jewish...

Books

All About the Art

By:

Robert Leiter

I have always argued that the 1950s, forever pegged as the decade of conformity, were far more varied and perhaps even more revolutionary -- at least, in the realm of the arts -- than was the subsequent decade that's looked back on, especially by once-radical college students, with sincere fondness. Wherever you look in the '50s, you can see evidence...

Books

Literature Gone Askew

By:

Robert Leiter

For someone like myself who came of age reading the great works of the 20th-century modernists -- writers like Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and Marcel Proust -- the highly ubiquitous postmodernist movement, which was spawned by the excesses and political shenanigans of the 1960s, has generally been an irritant to me. Whether it's Andy Warhol's soup cans or...

Books

'A Renegade Art Form'

An independent publisher takes a chance on the misunderstood novella

By:

Robert Leiter

Every so often, I've used this space to praise small independent publishers who, no matter the economic foolhardiness of their endeavors, forge ahead and never compromise their principles. I'm thinking particularly of one-person operations like Dryad Press down in Maryland and Turtle Point Press right in the thick of things in Manhattan, as well as ventures like New York Review...