By Joshua Cohen
Stanley Elkin was not an autobiographical novelist. He never franchised fast-food restaurants (“The Franchiser”), wrestled professionally (“Boswell”), ferried terminally ill children to Disney World (“The Magic Kingdom”) or had sex with a bear (“The Making of Ashenden”).
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By Joshua Cohen
Literary criticism is literature that discusses other literature, situating whatever book or poem historically, while at the same time, relating the literary work to the extraliterary: to the other arts, or to the world in general. Book reviewing is much the same as criticism except shorter, and the function it serves is often as much literary as one of consumer guidance: I give Kerouac three stars, or four, or three-and-a-half; William Burroughs’s new novel about nude dining gets two thumbs up, “a must-read.”
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Cleveland Kidnapping, Elizabeth Smart and Us
Tracing the Jewish Origins of the Holy Ghost
Magen Tzedek, Ethical Kosher Seal, Stalled Amid Orthodox Opposition
Forced Out by Nazis, Grandmother Returns With Family to Germany
Baby Boomers’ Rocky Road to Jewish Love
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