Joshua Furst
By Joshua Furst
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Culture Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel is a religious experience — radically so
Over the span of five novels, dropped every five years or so like stepping stones into the river of our national zeitgeist, Jonathan Franzen has taught his readers what to expect from him. His mode is so consistent that it’s become a brand: the granular depiction of domestic life filtered, via happenstance and the mechanics…
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Culture What brings us closer to Andre Gregory is what keeps us apart
This Is Not My Memoir By Andre Gregory with Todd London Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 208 pages, $27 Near the beginning of “My Dinner with Andre,” as the Wallace Shawn character played by Wallace Shawn is describing his trepidation around meeting Andre Gregory for dinner, he relates an anecdote, relayed to him by a mutual…
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Culture Aaron Sorkin’s moralizing liberal fantasy betrays the real ‘Chicago 7’
According to the lore provided to the press, the development of Aaron Sorkin’s new movie, “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” originated in 2007 when Steven Spielberg, who at the time was toying with making the film himself, summoned Sorkin to his home and urged him to write the screenplay for him. Interestingly, Sorkin had…
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Culture Can a white American Jew write a persuasive novel about Peru?
Ethical questions have been at the center of the Jewish faith since the religion was founded. What is my responsibility to other human beings? Who am I to claim I have the right answers, or any answers at all?How do I contribute to repairing the world? Might my attempt to do so cause unforeseen damage?…
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Culture Wallace Shawn Knows Exactly Who His Audience Is: You
It starts, as so many cultural events in New York do, with the invited guests milling around a tastefully decorated space, plucking canapés from trays held aloft by caterers, and eyeing each other as they wait for the speeches to begin — the pitches and thank you’s and asks for money. Looking around at the…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Mr. Robot
‘Mr. Robot,” in its second season, seemed to show up on the scene out of nowhere. Partly this may be because it aired on the USA Network, and so the first season didn’t make an impression until it hit the binge-watching warehouse of Amazon Prime. Or maybe, more likely, it’s because the show was a…
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Culture This is The Way We Need To Live in Trump’s America
What is left to be said, my Lord, that hasn’t been said already? I’ve read the editorials and the think pieces, the prognostications and eulogies for freedom. Everyone’s blaming everyone but themselves. And how many contradictory explanations for what went wrong and why and where we are now, what it means, what it portends and…
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Culture Finding Beauty in ‘Indecent’ — a 110-Year-Old Play Set in Jewish Brothel
Indecent By Paula Vogel Created by Paula Vogel & Rebecca Taichman Directed by Rebecca Taichman Music composed by Lisa Gutkin & Aaron Halva From the moment of its inception in 1906, Yiddish writer Sholem Asch’s play “God of Vengeance” was an object of controversy. Set in a Jewish brothel, the plot revolves around a love…
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