Anne Roiphe
By Anne Roiphe
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Culture How Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ Anticipated The Holocaust
Editor’s Note: Franz Kafka was born on this day, July 3, 1883. Anne Roiphe examines the prescience of the author’s “Metamorphosis.” ‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” The famous first line of this haunting tale is hard to forget and painful…
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Culture How Philip Roth Won the Battle for the Jews
In October 2016, author and essayist Anne Roiphe sung the praises of “The Conversion of the Jews,” a story from Philip Roth’s 1959 book “Goodbye, Columbus.” Upon hearing of Roth’s death, she writes: “Ah Phillip… the counter feminist gremlin of our time… Yes, you were a king of comedy. Yes, you saw right through the…
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Culture Why We Still Need Saul Bellow (And Bernard Malamud And Philip Roth)
This Month Anne Reads: “Seize the Day, by Saul Bellow” The three of them, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Phillip Roth were our first team offering to America. They won prizes. They were the talk of the town and all the towns across the English-speaking world. Although their roots were in poorer places, their ambitions…
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Culture Why Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Chelm Stories Aren’t Just For Children
This Month Anne Reads: ”The Fools of Chelm and Their History,” by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in 1902 in Leonim, Poland and died in Florida in 1991. In 1978 he won the Nobel Prize for literature bringing joy to Jews everywhere. This came as a vindication of our gifts to the…
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Culture How Isaac Babel Became The Bard Of Jewish Loss And Fate
This Month Anne Reads: “Gedali,” by Isaac Babel Born in 1894, he fell into the hellish century that lay just ahead. He wrote in Russian. He was a Communist. He was a university educated Jew. He was executed by firing squad January 27, 1940, in the Butyrka Prison in Moscow. He was having an affair…
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Culture How Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ Anticipated The Holocaust
This Month Anne Reads: Metamorphosis: By Franz Kafka ‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” The famous first line of this haunting tale is hard to forget and painful to remember. From the beginning the end is clear. Gregor Samsa will be…
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Culture Cynthia Ozick’s Golem Story Is a Fairy Tale of Sexual Obsession and Dentistry
This Month Anne Reads: “Puttermesser: Her Work History, Her Ancestry, Her Afterlife,” by Cynthia Ozick. Cynthia Ozick published her first Puttermesser tale in The New Yorker in 1982. The sequels were published in that magazine soon after, and then all parts were collected into a book (a novel) in 1997. That book became a finalist…
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Culture Where Kabbalah and Mad Magazine Meet, Mark Podwal Is the Product
Dr. Mark Podwal is a Jewish artist. That is to say his art is his homeland and Judaism is the language of his country. Like body and soul they are intertwined. For many years he has been my friend and my family has used the Haggadah he illustrated with Elie Wiesel in 1993. He began…
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