Writings
An Essay in the Threepenny Review!
I am absolutely thrilled to have a long essay in the Summer 2011 edition of The Threepenny Review. The essay, entitled “The Jazz Singers,” is about the three different movies—all iconic Jewish films—by that name. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
A New Piece in the New York Times Book Review
Here’s my review of Michael Parker’s new novel, The Watery Part of the World. The essay ran in the New York Times Book Review on Sunday, May 22nd, 2011—further proof that the world didn’t end on the 21st!
Golems! A Musical
Charles Orr's poster for the hypothetical play Di Goylemim
Charles Orr’s Hypothetical Library is one of my favorite projects on the internet. Orr, a brilliant book-jacket designer, partners with authors, asking them to provide flap copy for a book they could write but never actually will. He then designs a cover for this book, and together they seek a blurb from another real author. In complex and fruitful ways, the Hypothetical Library blurs the distinction between the real, the potentially real, and the pure dream of fiction.
It’s an honor and a great pleasure to have a hypothetical novel newly out on the Library: Golems! A Musical, a campy yet semi-theological story of the Second Avenue theater. Orr designed both a jacket for the novel and a hypothetical poster for the play within the novel, Di Goylemim. And Michael Chabon has been kind enough to provide a blurb for the project.
Please go take a peek!
The Fall of the House of Walworth
I’m delighted to have had the chance to review Geoffrey O’Brien’s wonderful new book, The Fall of the House of Walworth: A Tale of Murder and Madness in Saratoga’s Gilded Age, for today’s Los Angeles Times. As I mention in the review, when I first learned of the Walworths’ lurid family saga, I wished someone would write a good, juicy book about it. (In all seriousness, it puts the Beecher-Tilton scandal—of which I’m a huge fan, if one can be a fan of a 150-year-old lawsuit—to shame.) I can’t think of a better writer to take on the project than Mr. O’Brien. 22 August 2010.
A New Greek Testament
Ellinika Grammata has just come out with a Greek translation of The Testament of Yves Gundron, with a beautiful new (and, I dare say, really Hellenic-looking) cover. (I mean, look at those horses!) Please tell your Greek friends to look for it!
Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home
My review of Marilynne Robinson’s wonderful novel Home in the Los Angeles Times, Sunday, September 7, 2008.
Eli Miller’s Seltzer Delivery Service
Here’s my essay about one of the last seltzer delivery men in New York City. The piece originally appeared in the anthology Brooklyn Was Mine, Riverhead Books, 2008, and was republished at Nextbook (which is now Tablet magazine), January 2, 2008.
Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book
My review of Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book is in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 30, 2007.
The Big Schlep: My Review of Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Here’s a link to my New York Observer review of Michael Chabon’s new novel; it originally ran May 1st, 2007.
Review of The Pesthouse by Jim Crace
Jim Crace’s novel The Pesthouse may have been somewhat eclipsed by Cormac McCarthy’s The Road when it came out; but I think it’s a fine (and quite disturbing) book. Here’s my review, which ran in the Los Angeles Times, 29 April 2007.
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